The Thing with Feathers
by Rebel Goddess
Summary: Daniel finds an ancient tablet inscribed with his name on an alien planet. He steps through the Stargate and arrives on Earth mostly dead. Jack meets a new kind of snake god. Daniel gets Gatewrecked again. Then things get really strange. Summary inside.
1. Door To Heaven

Extended Summary: SG-1 goes to an alien planet where Daniel unearths an ancient tablet with his name on it. He takes it home, steps through the Stargate and arrives on Earth not breathing. Jack tries to shoot things and says "Oh fer cryin' out loud" a lot. Carter tries to stop Jack shooting things and is frustrated. Teal'c plots revenge. One of Janet's nurses gets a larger than usual role to play in the action. Butterflies and snakes are of importance, as are Greek Gods, chocolate bars, a Goa'uld called Minthe and Homer. This story has its seriously dark moments but they are clearly signposted.

This occurs in late season 5 (probably). Daniel's not dead, Jonas is never around, Jack is still a Colonel, Carter is a Major, Jacob's not dead, Hammond's still in charge of the SGC, Janet's not dead, and Teal'c still has Junior. Spoilers for seasons 1-5 but (I think) not beyond.

The title of the story is from Emily Dickinson's poem which gets thoroughly mangled. The title of this chapter comes from the movie where the original translation of Stargate is Door to Heaven, which set me thinking. Because I prefer the spelling and the writing of the character, Sha're is Shau'ri.

I disclaim.

**Door to Heaven**

Daniel Jackson, doctor of linguistics and archaeology, stepped into the Stargate event horizon on P5X-606 and exited it on Earth 21 grams lighter.

The 21 grams fact had far less impact on O'Neill than the sudden realisation that his pet Egyptologist was dead.

Bellowing for Janet, Jack dropped his kit and lunged to catch Daniel's falling body. The softest expiration of air he'd ever heard marked the last breath of his friend. Training kicked in and Daniel was on his back with his pulse checked and his airway open in seconds. Forcing air back into his friend's lungs, Jack caught Carter's eye and jerked his head towards Jackson's chest. CPR resumed, sirens screaming around them, they fought for the life of their friend.

Dr Fraiser pushed the Colonel out of the way, her expression as cold and stony as the marble tablet that the MALP carried through the 'Gate and her heart rate fluttering as rapidly as Jack's.

The stream of orders drifted over Teal'c's head surreally. With his gentle strong-armed help, Daniel Jackson was loaded onto a gurney. Then the body was propelled towards the Infirmary and the former First Prime could do nothing but watch as the tiny doctor straddled Daniel and pounded his chest, willing him to breathe, yelling commands and demanding vitals, her entire force of being focused on his friend as his was.

Beside him, Major Carter tried in vain to explain what had happened to a shocked General Hammond. O'Neill was already gone, a streak of camouflaged lightning after the blue-eyed, blue-lipped corpse.

Five minutes before Daniel Jackson had been translating an Earth joke into Goa'uld for Teal'c to better understand it while Major Carter and O'Neill had exchanged looks of mutual exasperation. Four minutes before Daniel Jackson had finally understood the Jaffa joke, so witty when spoken in the language of the false gods, and his laughter had not diminished even when he stumbled near the DHD. Three minutes before Teal'c had hefted Daniel Jackson's pack onto his back and raised an eyebrow at the number of artefacts the archaeologist bore. Two minutes before Daniel Jackson had breath to answer Jack's teasing about the "stuff" he carried. One minute before he had been alive. Now he was dead and Teal'c could not understand why. There was no blood, no gaping wound, nothing to indicate what had killed him, but dead he was and despite SG-1 and Janet's best efforts, dead he stayed.

Well, mostly-dead anyway and as everyone knows, there's a big difference between mostly-dead and all-dead.

* * *

The Stargate glimmered in the moonlight brightly. Moonlight – that couldn't be right, Daniel thought, there was no natural light in the Gate Room, not 28 floors below ground level and with a mountain in the way.

The stupidity of the thought hit him as he realised that this wasn't just Not the Gate Room, but also Not Colorado, probably Not the Earth and possibly Not the Galaxy. He hadn't been Colonel Jack O'Neill's pet archaeologist for six years for nothing, though, and he quickly sought out and completely failed to find a DHD.

"Oh bqllr," Daniel swore as he realised that something had, yet again, gone horribly wrong and he was stranded, yet again, on an alien world with no way home. Jack would be muttering about trouble-magnet-accident-prone-downright-careless-about-karma-archaeologists if he was around, but a quick glance showed Daniel what his ears had already told him: Jack wasn't here. Nor was the rest of SG-1 or the MALP.

Looking around, he saw rocks, rocks and more rocks. There were no trees between here and the horizon, a fact Jack would have appreciated, and the monotonous landscape was broken only by a dark river that flowed sluggishly half a mile from where he stood. Assessing the situation, he sat down on the steps and thought about his assets as Jack had taught him to do: He had his day-pack, some covertly smuggled chocolate and a very limited supply of coffee. What he didn't have was a GDO, DHD, Plan B or even a P90. The only acronym he could add to the mission's credit slate was SNAFU although FUBAR was also soon to be a contender.

He snorted as he realised that Jack had finally taught him military parlance when he wasn't around to hear him use it. Shaking off the brief touch of homesickness, he took stock of his surroundings. This world was dark, cold and devoid of other life. The water might, or might not, be drinkable. The night skies bore no resemblance to any heavens he'd ever seen and he couldn't pick out a single familiar constellation. Wherever he was, he was far from home and completely alone.

The last world he had been on with SG-1 was P5X-606. It was an archaeologist's dream: unspoilt, a gorgeous desert planet with the dry heat of Abydos and only slightly more vegetation, just enough trees to lead Jack to make another sarcastic remark about their universality. Better yet, his pangs of homesickness were alleviated by the discovery of a lost city, abandoned and ruined true, but in better condition than any ancient Earth city other than Pompeii. If he'd been excited before he found the Temple though, he was on a hyperactive-child's-sugar-high-of-a-lifetime when he reached the inner sanctum.

Jack had pouted, but then Jack always pouted when he started in on one of his brief lectures about the possible history of whatever world they were on. He knew Jack found them dull sometimes, but he'd also seen the glint of amusement in his Colonel's eye whenever certain names came up. Jack thought he didn't know but Daniel was well aware of his fondness for Homer and anything regarding gods getting their asses kicked, even if it was by other gods. Such instances were rare so Daniel made sure to include plenty of detail when they did arise.

Jack. Jack was going to kill him for this, not that it was Daniel's fault, no sir. Not that he ever called Jack 'sir'. Perish the thought. He'd been following Jack across P5X-606, being a dutiful linguist-cum-foot-soldier and keeping his side-arm strapped and his attention on the surroundings and not just on his fascinating new artefacts. The city's Hellenic ruins had suggested a whole new interpretation of the Greek myths and he'd been torn between staying to study them more thoroughly and rushing back to the SGC to discuss the possible implications of the finds with his archaeological colleagues. In the end, Jack's urgings to return in time for a hockey game had led Daniel to abandon the site, gather up as many of his finds as he could and dart after the Colonel.

Jack had been keeping a steady stream of bantering comments on the way back to the Gate, most of them about the pornographic mosaics they'd discovered and how lecherous the ancients were, but Daniel hadn't bothered replying to most of them. He'd been too absorbed in the consequences of his find. The tablet, heavier than it looked, had been carved roughly 3,500 years before, if the Linear A script found all over the ruins were a reliable indicator. 1500BCE Linear A was still in use, a few centuries later and it would have been Linear B and by the time of Homer, early antique Greek. He wondered if these people had been brought from that time by the Goa'uld and never evolved the later languages like the Abydonians _don't think of Shau'ri, damn it, too late, just don't start crying now, concentrate on the tablet, think of the origin of Linear A – Goa'uld, not so good. Quick, Latin: Amare: Amamus, amaverimus, amatus est… Not that one, vitskertr! OK, recite the early Greek alphabet backwards, that's better, just remember to breathe_ or if they had moved beyond the Linear A and that this last surviving script was an historical document from early in their colonisation.

His scriptural problem was simple: the tablet was a Rosetta stone linking Linear A, ancient Greek and a weird mix of Greek and Latin letters. The last made no sense unless read phonetically with a Chicagoan accent when they became comprehensively modern English.

The utter incompatibility of ideas astounded him. Despite Jack's belief that everywhere evolved the English language despite having none of the Romance or Saxon languages it was rooted in, Daniel knew how unusual it was to find it spoken anywhere off Earth. He'd been laughed out of academia because of his belief that the Pyramids showed that written language was much older than anyone previously thought. He didn't even want to think what would happen if he ever announced that little grey aliens were speaking modern English before Shakespeare ever penned the immortal lines "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

It wasn't just the language of the tablet but the content that was bothering him though that was troubling in and of itself. The scribe who had carved this marble spoke of the son of a King who had lived long ago, of his deciphering of the Labyrinth, his defeat of the false-god, his brief marriage to the local princess, his journey to his homeland, the loss of said-princess to a God of another land, his tragic return home and his quest to save his kingdom from the evil usurper that had claimed his throne. So far, so Theseus. That wasn't what was troubling the young archaeologist the most though.

The chalice he'd found next to the tablet bashed against his hip and he winced, momentarily distracted. The wedding cup - which reminded him so much of his own that lurked on the shelf in his apartment, ready to spring out at him, a tiger with claws of sharp memory and teeth of impossible regret - bore similar signs of loving care dedicated to its preservation. That wasn't why he'd personally carried it instead of putting it with the tablet and the dozen other artefacts on the MALP. Like the tablet, it had caught his eye for a foolishly simple reason and yet he hadn't been able to let either of them go. Like the tablet, it depicted an historic battle between a hero and a monster, the hero emerging triumphant and the fair Princess won and lost in a few brief scenes. Unlike the tablet, it carried only two words and it was these two words that had made him refuse to abandon it even when Jack had "Oh for crying out loud" him as he stumbled under the weight of the artefacts.

Despite being different materials, styles and even possibly eras, the tablet and the chalice had one property in common: they were carved with the same name that was as impossible as it was familiar to him because it was his own.

Even as he faced his new Robinson Crusoe Gate-wreck life, Daniel still found his breath taken away by that simple fact.

Breathing the cold dry air deeply, he put the thought to one side. Solving archaeological mysteries weren't going to get him home. There was nothing to do, he decided, but start walking in the hopes of finding some help, or at least some shelter. He wasn't getting anything done standing around here that was for sure. Shrugging his pack onto his shoulders and pushing himself up off the Stargate's plinth, he started to walk. "It could be worse," he murmured, "It could be raining."

The Gods' sense of humour is not subtle at the best of times. The words were barely out of his mouth before the monsoon started.

* * *

"Mostly dead."

Janet wasn't sure how the Colonel managed it, but the words fell like stones through her mental lake of equanimity, breaking her out of her carefully enforced serenity. The sarcastic ripples were only on the inside and she winced as she heard the scorn in his voice.

"Exactly how can he be 'mostly dead'? I mean, even for Daniel-Lazarus-Jackson, that's got to be tough." Teal'c was standing next to Jack and in a less serious time, she would have sworn his lip twitched into a partial smirk.

Janet sighed and wondered why they'd never covered dealing with sarcastic, worried, mother hen Colonels in her many years of training. "He's not dead, but he's not alive either. It's not a coma, it's not a hypnotic trance, it has nothing to do with the biofeedback mechanisms that can force a person into deep unconsciousness, he hasn't been knocked out. He just isn't there."

She chose not to tell Jack that she herself had declared Daniel dead or that his body had been wheeled down to the isolation room they kept for those SGC members who died of unknown causes. She'd been on her way to tell the Colonel that the fourth member of SG-1 was dead when the scream of one of her nurses had caused her to spin around and run back the way she had come.

She had finished cleaning Daniel up for viewing, removing more tubes and needles than Janet wanted to think about, and was tying the toe-tag on when the nurse had noticed a mark on the body. Her gloved fingers brushed lightly against it, noting the two deep puncture wounds, and Ellen leaned closer, her breath caressing the mark feather softly.

Then Daniel inhaled.

The nurse's scream was loud enough to rouse the rest of the facility, if not to wake the mostly-dead. By the time she got a grip there was no need to call a medical team – most of the Infirmary staff were in the room. What could have been the settling of the body into death became a resurrection. The nurse had almost had a heart attack and the fight for Daniel's life had begun again, even more desperately than the last time.

"Right." O'Neill drew the word out to twice its natural length and left its harmonics twanging on Janet's violin string nerves.

"Do you have any idea what could have caused his condition?" Janet shot Carter a surprisingly grateful glance. She could deal with worried Majors.

"Snakebite." The word snake was perhaps ill chosen because at it O'Neill's back went ramrod straight and his expression switched from open concern to barely suppressed horror.

"Goa'uld?"

There it was, the most feared word in her dictionary. She smoothed herself into calmness and looked the Colonel in the eye as she said, "No, but whatever it was, we don't have an anti-venom for it. There's a bite mark on his left ankle, two deep fang wounds and the area around the wound is infected. The teeth must have gone right through his boots. We've tried to draw the infection out but nothing is working."

"But… mostly dead?" Jack's expression was one she had seen too many times, confused and afraid and not quite willing to admit to just how scared he was for his friend.

Janet intertwined her fingers and gripped until the knuckles whitened, keeping her face carefully impassive. If she let herself feel now, she'd break down and weep. She couldn't watch him die, not again. "He's not breathing on his own. His responses are slow. His heartbeat is so erratic that it's stopped several times and I've only just managed to get it back. We have him on a ventilator and an experimental form of a pacemaker that Anise loaned us." She stopped short of saying that it was the only thing still keeping the archaeologist's heart beating steadily. None of them needed to hear that. "The machines may be the only things keeping him going. From a medical perspective, he should be dead."

"But he isn't," Sam said it in a half questioning tone, as if the notion was fragile and would break if too much reliant weight was placed upon it.

"No, he isn't, but he isn't responding to stimuli and his EKG patterns are flat-lined. If there were a definite cause, I'd say he was brain dead, but as it is, I just don't know what's wrong with him. The venom from the snakebite may have caused this, but we've had enough alien devices affecting personnel for me not to discount something else at this stage." Janet looked down at the table and then forced herself to face Jack. "Was there anything on the planet that would have caused his condition?"

"No, nothing," Jack answered, but even as he spoke the words Carter gave him a sharp glance and he knew he was lying. He just wished he could remember about what.

* * *

The river was further than he'd thought; either that or the strange event that had led him to this place was affecting his perceptions of the passage of time.

The sun was rising by the time his feet found the damp river bank and he sank gratefully to the ground as he found the water clear and pure smelling. Dipping a hand in, the feel of the cool liquid against his colder skin soothed him. He cupped his hands and leaned forward to drink.

"Stop!"

His lips brushed the liquid and stopped. He turned his head to see a young boy running towards him, arms waving frantically, face contorted in fear.

"Don't drink that," the boy fell to his knees next to Daniel and pushed his hands so that the water flew across the river in an arc of rainbow coloured drops.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"It's the River of Lethe," the boy said if the fact was patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. "Drinking the water makes you forget."

Only on the word forget did Daniel realise that the boy wasn't speaking Goa'uld, Abydonian, English or any of the living languages he spoke, but Homeric Greek. That he was standing by the River of Lethe talking in Ancient Greek to a boy who, he had just realised, bore a striking resemblance to a minor Goa'uld he and Teal'c had once despatched would have bothered him a few years ago, but not any more. Deciding against giving his peaceful explorer(s) speech, Daniel looked down at the water and saw dazed fish flit by under the reflection of clouds that were perfectly fluffy and white.

"Where is this place?"

The boy, a mop of light brown hair set above a piercing pair of brown eyes, considered the question thoughtfully. "Don't know."

"OK, so where did you spring from?" Daniel sat down on the bank and gripped his hands in front of his knees, tucking himself up into a small and unthreatening ball. It was not a move that Jack would like, but then Daniel didn't see much of a threat coming from an eleven-year-old boy and even if it did, he wasn't in much of a position to defend himself anyway. He might as well make himself comfortable. "I didn't see a village as I was walking here."

The boy laughed. "There isn't a village for miles, not until you reach the sea. There's just me and the others at the Haven."

"The Haven?" Rapidly sorting through every historical mention of the word, Daniel found himself adrift on a sea of options.

None of his thoughts, as it turned out, were anything near the truth.

"Yes," the boy smiled brightly, "the Haven, it's where I live with Iannis and Mazda and Shau'ri, and all the others who was once possessed by the false gods."


	2. Happy Ending Hollywood

Thanks to my reviewers. Hope this next chapter doesn't disappoint. I hope to post 1 per day until it's done, and if anyone is still interested, a short sequel to follow.

I disclaim. The title of this chapter is taken from Bowling for Soup's song "Smoothie King" from their "A Hangover You Don't Deserve" album. Stargate SG-1 does not belong to me. Did you have to rub it in?

**Happy Ending Hollywood…**

"He's crashing!"

The nurse was saying something else but Jack found himself lost in the high pitched wail of the heart monitor as Daniel's heart skipped beats.

As abruptly as it began, it ended. The momentary blip had almost caused Jack's heart to stop too, but now Daniel's was back to beating and his own to racing.

"Dr Fraiser?" Damn, did his voice really just quake?

"He's back," Janet hung her stethoscope around her neck and started doing medical things to Daniel. Anise's device was doing its job, keeping his heartbeat steady and regular even as the rest of his body failed him. Jack found he couldn't look away as her fingers spread across his throat and chest before, for the briefest moment, coming to rest on his forehead to brush that errant lock of hair away. She might never admit it, but O'Neill suspected that Dr Fraiser's most frequent patient was also her favourite. "Colonel," oh hell, were those tears? Jack prayed not. "If I'm going to help Daniel, I need to know what bit him."

"We're going back to P5X-606 later today. The General ordered us all to wear hazmat suits just in case, but Teal'c," he slapped the big guy on the shoulder and felt the Jaffa gaze down at him with that impossible to read expression of his, "says they don't carry one in his size, so he gets to go commando."

The joke was awful and not even Carter could raise a dutiful smile in return.

O'Neill sobered abruptly, though that was easy enough as he'd never lost himself behind his joker's mask. Nodding his head towards the pale and motionless figure in the bed, for Daniel is a childlike figure swamped by the grey blankets and white sheets, he commanded in a tone that belied its own pleading emotion, "Take care of Danny while we're gone."

Janet's look told him all he needed to know, but it was with a heavier heart that he turned out of the infirmary and set off for his office.

* * *

He'd practically dragged Mandras back to the Haven, the boy confused but willing to please his new friend.

She wasn't there when he reached the stone building. Apparently it was her way to wander down to the wander the rocky landscape during the day, sometimes collecting food or flowers, other times just thinking. They all understood the need for solitude.

There were faces he recognised though, people who welcomed him as a hero. They had been villains the last time he'd seen them, possessed by Goa'uld, golden of eye and black of heart. Now their faces shone with a far more holy light.

Apparently new arrivals had been rare until recent years when they'd been coming faster than anyone could remember. SG-1, Daniel thought with some pride, were the ones doing that. Ra's host, Apophis's and the one that made him shudder, Hathor's. She had been afraid to approach him at first, her personality so utterly different to her nymphomaniac parasite, and she had hung back, hiding her face behind the red hair that lay in tangles against her cheeks.

She thought he was careful not to look at her, but a few gentle smiles cast her way were more signs of his absolute abstraction than the preoccupation with his time with her parasite. At the end of an hour's lively conversation with the others, she'd gathered her courage into both hands and approached him. Falling to her knees, a position he quickly helped her up from, she begged his forgiveness. He told her that there was nothing to forgive and that she had been far more a victim of Hathor than he, or any of SG-1, had. She had run weeping then, but the others had assured him that the tears were not of distress but of joy that she was forgiven her trespasses.

Every moment he was there, Daniel felt the tension in his body rise as he waited for her, Ammonet's former host, Kasuf's daughter, Skaara's sister, his wife, Shau'ri. She was here, he knew it, could feel it in his bones, and every moment not spent with her was an eternity of agony.

The hours passed like days. The sun rose slowly and was high in the sky before Daniel could settle enough to sit still and not pace the floor as he waited for her coming. They tried to get him to eat, but he had no stomach for it. His lips were moving continually shaping the beloved words in Abydonian and his tongue could almost taste her. He wouldn't displace that feeling for mere bodily need. He hadn't slept in more than twenty-six hours, but he didn't care. Shau'ri was minutes away. She always returned for the midday meal, they assured him again and again.

The others, especially Ra and Apophis's former hosts, kept touching him, reassuring themselves of his reality even as he kept telling them that he had never been a host and was not, as far as he was aware, dead. That lead to an entire train of thought he would have to ride later when his entire being was not focused on Shau'ri's presence.

The River of Lethe wasn't the only thing that could make Daniel forget everything else and the rest of the world vanished.

She was before him.

* * *

"Should you be doing that, sir?" The sir came after a pause, as if Carter wasn't sure whether to respect his position as her CO or lock him up because of his position as her CO under an altar with his yellow suited butt in the air and his tongue cursing in a way to turn that air bright cobalt, or possibly navy.

"Daniel was crawling around here, damn it," Jack pulled his hand back and swore at the hurting finger. "Right before I yelled at him to get his archaeologically aged butt in gear."

His knees were killing him, but something else was killing Daniel and he'd swap a leg to not have to watch his friend die, not again.

Lazarus Jackson was certainly living up to his nickname. He'd been dead so many times that Ferretti was taking bets on the number of resurrections he would achieve by the end of the year and they were already in to double figures. If Jack wasn't worried that every death would be the archaeologist's last, he'd have laid on a bid himself.

He could hear Carter shifting impatiently. "Find anything, sir?"

"O'Neill," Teal'c's deep voice seemed more god-like than any Goa'uld's in this strange temple. It echoed and reverberated until it filled every niche and returned doubled upon them.

Jack's head shot up and he swore again as it crashed into the altar above him. "Oh fercryin'outloud," he grumbled in one breath, "What?"

Again that rumble seemed to fill the temple. "I believe that Daniel Jackson was bitten by the snake currently approaching us."

"What?" Carter span around and Jack was out from under the table in less time than it took Daniel to drink a mug of coffee. Well, almost, not even Jack's jungle cat reflexes are quite that fast.

"The snake," Teal'c indicated that they should turn around and face the Temple's front door.

Jack spun and saw the slithering serpent coming. His gun was in his hand even before Teal'c finished speaking.

"That thing bit Daniel?" It was tiny, maybe six inches long and as thin as a whip, bright purple with black markings and a forked green tongue. Its sinuous body movements were deceptively calm as it had already reached the steps at the base of the altar and was hissing at them angrily. It also had minute wings sprouting from behind its head.

"Shehhehehesss 'Thing'?"

How to hiss something with no s in it is a minor problem when you're tongue is split in two.

Jack thought he was hearing things and shook his head slightly to get rid of the ringing in his ears. "Carter, any ideas?"

"Not yet, sir," she was also looking wary. Her grip on her gun tightened.

"It calls me thing? The crawling, shuffling, foul ape calls me 'thing'?" Again the hissing sound came but this time it resolved into words.

"Did you just hear the snake talk?" Jack was relieved to see both Carter and Teal'c give subtle nods. OK, so not crazy, just turning into Dr Dolittle.

An outraged hiss reached their ears. "Snake? I?"

Images of Miss Piggy pouting and saying 'Pretentious? Moi?' ran through Jack's head. Daniel was right, pop culture was destroying his brain. "OK, so you're not a thing or a snake, how about serpent?"

"God." It looked as smug as the snakeheads he so happily blew up at every opportunity. He wondered if the attitude came as standard with the cold-blooded body and forked tongue. "Guardian of this place. Your Lord and Master. Kneel before me or perish in agony."

"Oh, no," Jack shook his head in mocking sadness, "We've met snakes that think they were gods and now they're itty bitty tiny bits of snakes that used to think they were gods."

"Goa'uld?" If the not-a-snake-but-a-god had had eyebrows, it would have raised one.

"Yes." Teal'c did have eyebrows, but he didn't see the point of raising either of them at this juncture.

"No true gods," the selectively-blasphemous-not-a-snake-but-a-god was edging towards them, its little wings burring.

Jack made sure his weapon was pointed straight at its diamond shaped head. Most things died with a sufficiently large bullet in their cerebellum. God, he'd just thought a word like cerebellum, far from pop culture rotting his brain, he'd been hanging out with geeks too long Making a mental note to have a beer and hockey night with Ferretti soon, Jack cocked the gun and showed the famous O'Neill eat-lead-and-like-it smile. "So they aren't gods but you are?"

"Yes." At last, a word it could hiss properly. The s echoed around them until a distant stone fell and displaced the sound.

"Did you bite our friend?" Carter's P90 was also trained on the snake but her manner was far more conciliatory than her Colonel's.

Jack could have sworn the snake gave Teal'c's stomach an assessing look. "Bite? No, I merely nibbled. If I had bitten, he would be dead."

"Daniel Jackson is mostly dead." Anyone who didn't know the Jaffa would have said that his face was impassive and his voice emotionless. Anyone who did know him would have said that Teal'c was in a volcanic fury and only just keeping it under control.

"Yes?" The damn thing sounded pleased. Jack only just restrained himself from firing his P90 an inch to the right of it in warning.

"Yes." His trigger finger was getting really itchy. "He's been mostly-dead all day and I want to know what you did to him."

If the thing had had shoulders, it would have shrugged. "Sent him on his way."

Jack's finger was really, really, really itchy now. He swapped hands because it was that or blow the damn thing in two right this second. "On his way where?"

Carter gave him a look that expressed her surprise at his keeping his temper this long. He hadn't even said "Ohfercryin'outloud" yet and she was finding it disturbing. A Jack with a quiet demeanour was a Jack getting ready for a seriously big blow up.

…_Itch, itch, itch._

"To his heart's desire." Again, the snake-thing hissed where there were no susurrations.

"Ohfercryin'outloud!"

Carter couldn't help but feel slightly relieved. That was more like the Colonel. Perhaps the coming storm could be averted.

…_itch, Itch, ITCH._

"And what is the desire of the heart of Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c's head was slightly on one side and his eyebrow almost raised, a sure sign that he was going to be treading on the snake soon if it didn't start offering some answers fast.

…_ITCH, ITCH, ITCH!_

The snake smirked, or did whatever the snake equivalent was. "To be with his wife."

"Ahh." Jack at last scratched his itch. The bullet bore into the temple floor an inch from the thing's head and it hissed furiously at him in response, its bright green tongue spitting out at him and lashing the steps with bright orange saliva.

"Blasphemer!"

Jack made a point of aiming the gun directly at the snake's head. It took the point.

The thing arched its back off the ground and swayed before them, its tiny body undulating as it moved hypnotically closer. "Take me to him and I will recover him from his living death."

Now there was a phrase to soothe the savage tiger-Colonel. The slight expression on Teal'c's face assured Carter that he was thinking along similarly sarcastic lines.

"And why should we believe you?"

This time the thing definitely shrugged. "I am a God. I speak no lies. My words fork lightning."

"Certainly forked your tongue," Jack muttered as he considered the options. "Right, we're taking it back, but under restraints, OK?"

The other two exchanged a glance. What else could they do? Daniel was lying in an infirmary bed, pulse and breathing so slow and shallow that he might as well have stopped, the ventilator Janet had put him on forcing life into him but not strength. They had to save him. They had to try.

"Grab that pot." If Daniel had been there, he would have frowned at pot and started to explain how the pot was actually a funeral urn of great religious significance but if Daniel had been there, they wouldn't be having this problem. The whole of SG-1 ached at that moment for one of his lectures, even one of the really boring ones about the importance of pot shards found in middens underneath layers of night-soil.

Now they were in the shit and it wasn't for archaeological reasons.

Moving with the speed of a man trained to dodge well-aimed water balloons thrown by ex-First Primes, Jack caught the snake-not-a-god-thing behind its head and gripped firmly, forcing its tiny body into the urn with the roughness of barely contained righteous indignation.

The creature hissed at him and attempted to break back out, its green eyes shining with wrath. "I am your God, and you dare to treat me thus?"

O'Neill just managed a smirk at it. "Get used to it. Until Daniel's better, you're our prisoner."

Its cries of rage were cut off by Teal'c slamming the lid onto the urn. "The creature is most annoying."

"You can say that again."

"The creature is," The Jaffa caught Jack's eye and wisely stopped. The Colonel was holding onto his patience by a thread as thin as spider silk and nowhere near as tough.

"Let's get back to Daniel. If the little megalomaniac Napoleon in the jar," he shook it and they could all hear the thing swear inside, "doesn't help Daniel, I figure we can always send it back to Chaka for supper. I'm sure he'd like a new victim for a game of Toss the Snake-Head."

The I-am-God-snake-creature hissed at them. It didn't need to know who or what Chaka was to know that Jack meant business. It wasn't used to this kind of treatment. It was a God and had been worshipped as such for millennia. True, lately its number of worshippers had dwindled as the planet's population had slowly gone extinct, but the coming of the bright-minded young Earther had changed all that.

In the darkness, the creature lurked and plotted and smirked. The one called O'Neill would regret he'd ever seen the urn. Curling up on itself, the thing in the pot bit its own tail and sucked meditatively. Justice was sweet, but vengeance was sweeter.

TBC...

Too short? More tomorrow.


	3. Butterflies and Hurricanes

Thank you to all my lovely, lovely, lovely reviewers. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. Not so many one liners, but the plot progresses! (Yes, shocked me too.)

I disclaim. Muse yields the title. The brilliant writers of Stargate: SG-1 yield the characters.

**Butterflies and Hurricanes**

She looked thinner than he remembered; her dark hair bound back and her eyes shadowed with darkness that burned him.

Lightning bolts move slower than Daniel as he reaches for his once and future wife.

Monsoons rain less water than she weeps away.

Thunderstorms are quieter than his cries of joy as he realises she is solid, real, free.

Hurricanes exert less concentrated force than their first embrace.

One glance between them is enough to light the world on fire.

Their tears of happiness are enough to put it out again.

Meteorological phenomena, in fact, are entirely inadequate as similes for their passion. Suffice it to say that it would be easier to part Sam from a Naquada'h reactor, Janet from her needles, Jack from his P90 and Teal'c from his dignity than it would to prise these two a millimetre apart.

For Daniel Jackson, the whole universe was reduced to this place, this time, this kiss.

The others settled in and made themselves comfortable. Answers would be a while in coming, but they had all the time in the world.

* * *

The brain patterns were flat. Daniel's brilliant mind was gone. The warrior-scholar who had opened the Stargate and the Universe to an ungrateful world was lost. If it were any other member of the SGC but Daniel, Janet would have wept with her head on her crossed arms, knowing they were gone forever, but this was Dead-Again-Can't-Keep-a-Good-Archaeologist-Down-Daniel. This man had survived more staff blasts, ribbon devices, cave-ins, bombs and Goa'uld torturing sessions than anyone she'd ever met. He had survivor tattooed on his butt, just above the large 'Property of Jack O'Neill & SG-1, Return In Perfect Condition Or Else'. God help those who didn't heed the warning. She had to remember that and keep faith in his obscene luck that so often brought him to the brink of death before pulling him back at the last possible moment.

Daniel completely failed to move as Nurse Ellen changed his IV bags and adjusted his central line. Janet caught her deputy carefully smoothing an errant lock away from Dr Jackson's forehead and for the first time since she'd been called to the Gate-room, a smile flickered across her features. She didn't say a word to the woman, but added another nurse to the list of Daniel's admirers. He was, more in spite of his frequent visits to the Infirmary than because of them as the presence of an irascible Colonel O'Neill guaranteed that a comatose Daniel was still a difficult patient, the favourite charge of the staff. She'd seen grown women fight over who got to give him a sponge bath. Occasionally she'd pull rank and do it herself, if only to prove to herself that Daniel was healing from his latest injuries and that he wasn't dying again.

"Doctor Fraiser." It was the General and as he was using her title, she knew that it was a professional visit. She straightened up and adjusted her stethoscope as she turned to face him. "Doctor, is there any change?"

"None sir." Janet wished she could offer him a crumb of comfort but like Old Mother Hubbard, her cupboard was bare. "I've done everything I can. Now it's up to SG-1 and Daniel himself."

"Keep me informed, Doctor," for the briefest moment his gaze lingered on her face and she saw his concern for Daniel writ large. Her nurses weren't the only ones to have a soft spot the size of Texas for the archaeologist. Then it was gone and the cold mask of command fitted safely back over his face. He couldn't afford to play favourites any more than Janet could herself, but that didn't mean his heart didn't ache for his premier team.

The news from the lab wasn't good. There were no venom or drugs in his blood. Whatever had done this to him couldn't be traced with standard tests. She was beginning to fear it couldn't be traced at all. Butterfly bandages in hand ready for the incoming SG-3, Janet allowed herself one last glance back at the still form and turned away. If the General could maintain his professional demeanour, so could she and Nurse Ellen knew better than to say so if she saw tears form in her superior's eyes.

Her body might be active, her mind might answer the questions of the concerned SG-3, choosing the correct solutions to their various medical dilemmas, but Janet's heart was in stasis, waiting for the news that would allow it to beat freely again.

"Janet!" Ellen's professionalism was forgotten as she called out for help. Hammond and Janet both spun round to stare at the nurse. "It's his skin!"

The fine thread work of veins was glowing golden beneath the skin. They swept up from his ankle and across the rest of his body, the tracery perfect in its anatomical detail. Then the glow wasn't just golden but silver and purple, amethyst and sapphire, emerald and ruby. Daniel was exuding colour bright enough to make a rainbow weep itself away in envy. He had been a glowing energy being before but this was different, this was a violent mix of outrageous colours that would make 1980s' fashion designers cry "Too much!" It spread across skin and reached his hair, his face an eerie sea green that highlighted the intensity of his eyes, and changed him from a blonde to a blue. Then the colours shifted and he was a kaleidoscope of shades.

Janet and Ellen watched Daniel for the next hour and saw colours adorn the human skin that were never found there outside of sci-fi movies before. The only constant was his hair. While the rest of him went through every conceivable variation of shading, his hair stayed a sapphire blue.

* * *

The days passed easily, washing away the aching agonies that Daniel had at one time believed to be his eternal companions. Shau'ri was herself and his own. The Haven, as it turned out, was somewhere that seemed impossible to dislike. The sun shone hot, but not burningly so. The skies were blue but the rains came when needed and fell gently like lover's caresses on the skin. The ground was fertile provided you kept near the river and didn't mind the prevalent vegetation of highly pollinated flowers. There were springs that provided drinking water and they had even discovered an area of woodland beyond the Haven. The seasons were mild, the crops grew well and there was even a plant that resembled tea.

It could have been a world of fire and rock and pain and Daniel would have been happy. He was with Shau'ri. As it was, the benign world seemed to smile blessings upon them and Daniel's happiness transcended to bliss.

He thought he might be dead because except for a single year on Abydos, his life has never offered him such joy. Despite missing SG-1 and Earth, coffee, chocolate and anti-histamines, the thought doesn't trouble him much. It wasn't like he had never been dead before. He didn't think he'd been infested with a Goa'uld, Sam had certainly been in her own mind when Jolinar had taken over her body, but perhaps a heavenly afterlife would be impossible without Shau'ri.

Shau'ri. Even now he could barely let her out of his sight. There was magic in her movements, her hair was strung with starlight and her eyes glittered with the promise of eternity. They were going to have their happily ever after, even if it was when they were both dead. Yet part of him still believed that she could be snatched away from him at any moment.

Mandras and the others laughed at them, at the way Daniel would do anything for her. She felt unworthy of a love that had followed her into the grave when she was cursed by the gods and would ask him for nothing, but received the slightest token of his affection as the greatest gift. They were only children and like children they were both wise and foolish, Mandras said, his 300 year experience as a Goa'uld host leaving him far older in spirit than them despite twelve-year-old boy's body.

Walking back with her now from the City, the capital and only city of this state needed no other name, Daniel wondered again if he was in fact dead. Solar flares could explain the time travel, but everything else was impossible. The sun couldn't bring the dead back to life but here she was. They could transfer him back through time, but time and space? He was in Greece, but it wasn't really Greece. It was the mass of city-states that would one day resolve into a full country. He was living in the past. He was living history. He was also living prophecy, a guarantee that if this land was Ancient Greece, then it was also Earth and that one day he would walk across it as a younger version of his current self, declaiming Homer to a laughing Sarah.

Homer had once meant only Odysseus, wine-dark seas and fearful gods. Now it brought to mind Jack and even with Shau'ri's hand in his, Daniel could long for and miss his best friend and the two other members of SG-1.

For the first eight months, he had spent every day by the Stargate, waiting for the rest of SG-1 to come for him, looking for a way to return. Shau'ri had gone with him, refusing to be left or leave for a moment, and had worked nearby, tilling the earth with arms that held her husband tender-fiercely at night, listening to her Dan'yel talk of the worlds he had visited, planning a life back on Earth and learning of her son, Shifu. She worked the ground and he tried to translate the writings he had found in the City's library, stopping occasionally to help her work or to kiss her, incapable of having her so near and not in touch.

They gave up when he finished the last of the translations relating to the Gate and realised that the DHD was gone, destroyed by an ex-host terrified of anyone opening the Stargate and bringing the Goa'uld upon them decades before. He left a message for anyone who came looking for him, tucking the note inside the plastic envelope that had held his last Kleenex. They visited it still, looking for signs of others, but Shau'ri's garden slowly reverted as they found life in the Haven more and more engrossing.

Shau'ri planted a pomegranate tree in the place where Mandras had first found her Dan'yel, delighted by the fruit, and he never had the heart to tell her of Persephone's fate. She cared for it as if it were the child they knew she might never bear, yet Daniel felt a shiver of cold dread whenever he looked at it.

Shau'ri had a cure for that. As love made a child grow strong and wise, she said it would do the same for their tree. It became their place, their sacred grove, and whenever Dan'yel lost sight of her, he would look to the west towards the tree and see her sleeping beneath its heavy boughs, a wood nymph caught napping.

She teased him about his habit of watching her sleep and the teasing would turn to play and other things and Dan'yel's cold feeling would be forgotten until the next time he saw the tree outlined in red by the setting sun, its dark fruits turned bloody by the light.

"Dan'yel!" Mandras was calling him and he could he smell the stew from his resting place by the Haven's wall.

Carefully wrapping his journal in its protective cloth and pushing it deep into his pocket so that it lay warm against his breast, Daniel shook away his feeling of foreboding and turned his back on the setting sun.

If he'd known what was coming, he would have cut the accursed tree down and burned it to ash, scattered the ash on the sea and salted the earth where it once grew, but hindsight is 20:20 and even on the best of days Daniel could only claim vision of 6:8.

* * *

The trip back to the Gate was uneventful with Teal'c taking point, Jack carrying the funeral urn and Carter watching their six.

Every five or six steps, Jack would make sure to jerk the funeral urn just enough to rattle the snake inside. Rattle the snake – Daniel would have appreciated that one.

"Carter, dial us up." The god-not-snake hissed at him again, cursing him in language to make a marine blush. The Colonel was special ops though. It would take language to make a linguist blush to ruffle him.

Jack stopped for a moment and jiggled the jar. "Hey, snake-thing."

Again the creature hissed "Shehhehehesss 'Thing'?"

That he could still piss wannabe-snake-gods off in only three words pleased O'Neill immensely. "You said you put Daniel into his 'living death'. What does that mean, exactly?"

The snake is still cursing. "He's with his wife."

"Yeah, that's the bit that's confusing me." Jack has to resist the urge to shake more but the snake-thing is being cooperative and antagonising the only thing that knows where Daniel's mind is would probably bring the combined wrath of Carter and Janet down on his head. "Cause Shau'ri's dead and Daniel isn't."

Jack could have sworn he heard the snake sigh in exasperation. "His spirit has gone further down its road to the Great Path. He will return when his wish is fulfilled. My venom will provide him with the necessary passage home."

The wormhole whooshed to life and the whole of SG-1 felt the tension in their spines relax a fraction. They were going home with a possible cure for Daniel.

Stepping into the Stargate, O'Neill felt the pot begin to shake and then it exploded, leaving cuts on his hands. Even as he was divided into atoms, he heard the snake-thing spit, "So long, suckers."

The tiny purple body vanished into the event horizon.

SG-1 dove after it and were confronted by some very confused Marines on the other side.

There was no sign of the snake thing and with it went all SG-1's hopes for a cure for Daniel.

Fraiser had no good news for them and they were left to linger by his bedside and hope against hope that their friend would prove his nickname correct and pull through by himself.

The myth would later say that it was now that the shadow fell over the SGC and that their souls were lost to darkness because they had lost the light that had led them to a better way.

Daniel had always hated that part or would when he heard it much later and in another place from a personage he had himself dismissed as myth. Too modest, too self-abnegating, too damn humble to realise his own worth, he hid his light beneath a bushel that saved his blushes but did sod all to hide the fact that his goodness burned like the sun at noon.

Truth was that the SGC wasn't the same without him and that SG-1 would never be the same if they did not win their archaeologist back. Jack was so grumpy that grown captains cowered at his approach, Carter worked until she had exhausted every avenue of possible scientific thought to save him and Teal'c walked around with an expression that suggested that Junior was giving him permanent indigestion and that the favour was returned. The SGC had lost a favourite son and nothing would alleviate that loss but the return of Lazarus from the grave, and it would take nothing less than a miracle to achieve that.

* * *

Now by the firelight on the first anniversary of Daniel's arrival amongst them, a year of uninterrupted bliss, they spoke of their experiences as hosts. Daniel called it therapy. The others only knew that speaking began to bridge the abyss of pain that they had endured and brought them a step further toward healing their wounded souls.

"The Gods," how well they knew them to be false gods, but yet the memory of worship lingered, harsh and unconquerable, "they made me watch as they murdered my family, torturing them until they begged for death, killing them and then reviving them in the sarcophagus, killing them again and again until they broke and their souls fled and though their hearts beat and their wounds healed, they were no longer alive. I only wish that theirs were the only deaths I witnessed, the only atrocities I could not stop, but they were only the first."

Daniel knew this story too well, but it still gave him shivers to hear Mandras tell it.

The boy goes on, dry-eyed and unsmiling, relating a fragment of what he has endured, drawing the poison from his soul drop by drop. "The day I died and came here was not the happiest of my life. Until I was here, I had forgotten happiness. It was a release though, a freeing of the spirit I will never forget. For so many years I prayed, and then I stopped praying, stopped hoping and accepted my fate as a vessel for the demon, the false-god that stole my life and my family."

Mandras smiles slowly and it is as the rising of the sun after a long, terrible night to Shau'ri. Her own imprisonment was the longest night she'd ever known. It is noon for her soul now and she hopes the darkness has passed forever. "This is not life I would have wished for, but it is enough."

The words are true for all of them, for none would have chosen this existence so far from all that is familiar and beloved, but compared to before, this is paradise. Each has their own word for it, but the most familiar to Daniel is Jeptha's, for he calls it the Garden of Eden and Heaven.

However, as everyone knows, even in the Garden of Eden there is danger. Beneath the pomegranate tree is a stone and beneath the stone is a hollow. The hollow waits but is no more than a void, and Nature hates a vacuum.

* * *

Jack was pacing, a tiger trapped in a cage too small for its magnificence. Sam had to stop watching him; he was making her even dizzier than no sleep and only snatched mouthfuls of food already had. Teal'c remained his usual stone-faced self, but those who knew him could see the tension in his ebony frame. The Jaffa was not a happy bunny.

"SG-1." Hammond let the file drop to the table with a soft thud. Only years of training stopped him from sighing. "Any news on Dr. Jackson's condition?"

There, he'd said Dr. Jackson, as if he was just another employee, not Daniel the young man he'd come to admire so much and seen suffer terribly far too often. Somehow that didn't distance the pain at all.

"No, sir." Hammond found himself wondering when Sam had begun to look so worn. He made a mental note to put all four of SG-1 on stand-down as soon as this later crisis was over. He deliberately made himself ignore the possibility that there could only be three of SG-1 left to stand-down. The other would be lying down, permanently. He winced internally at the thought. Clearly he'd been spending too much time with Jack.

Sam noticed the slight grimace flicker across her commanding officer's face and wondered if he had indigestion. The meatloaf in the cafeteria was certainly bad enough.

"You requested our presence, General Hammond." Teal'c actually sounded impatient, well impatient for him anyway. He had barely left Daniel's bedside for the week he had been mostly-dead and he already seemed edgy after mere minutes away.

The others stared at him for a moment in shock, but his face was now impassive.

"Yes," Hammond cleared his throat and glanced down at the folder before him. This wasn't going to be a good conversation. He'd primed his adjutant to ring the Big Red Phone if the shouting went above 15 decibels. "We've received a message from our allies amongst the Tok'ra. There's a threat made against Earth and SG-1 is the team best equipped to deal with it."

"A threat, sir?" When had Jack become so good at barely-veiled insolence? The words were venomous. George knew that for Jack the only threat that mattered right now was the one that had damaged Daniel and vanished into the Stargate.

"The Tok'ra informed us of a rising Goa'uld power, one who believes that conquering Earth is the first step along the path to becoming a System Lord." Hammond laid the file down before him and folded his hands together on the table, leaning forwards against the length of his forearms as he spoke. "Her name is Minthe and she poses a serious threat to us. Her fleet of motherships are approaching and she will be arriving within the next week. I've spoken to the Tok'ra and both they and I believe that SG-1 are the only ones that can stop her."

"Oh fer cryin' out loud."


	4. Is Not For Me and You

Once again thanks to all my reviewers (and indeed those who put me on story alert!) for their support. Exam tomorrow so expect replies after that & thanks for your patience. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint.

I disclaim. The title of this chapter finishes the Bowling For Soup quote of chapter 2. So Happy Ending Hollywood...

…**Is Not For Me and You**

The days pass and they age gracefully, their souls expanding as they love. Even Mandras, trapped for centuries as a child has become a teenager and a temperamental one at that.

It is due to his foot stomping antics after his latest English lesson that they have sought the peace of the pomegranate tree and the soothing sounds of the river of forgetfulness. They chose not to forget but remember when they are in this place. The wonders of Abydos, Earth and every world either of them has ever visited cannot compare to the paradise of this place where they are together.

Daniel stands up slowly, careful not to disturb his Shau'ri's sleep. His hands stretch out high above his head and he smiles into the sunset.

The pomegranate falls and he catches it an inch above his wife's beautiful dark head. He juggles it for a moment, smiling at himself for his hypersensitive awareness of any dangers that could await her, as if danger could find them here.

She stirs in her sleep and he waits until she is settled again before moving a few steps away. There is a stone tablet he left nearby and he is banned from the library until he returns it.

The enforced four hour break was secretly plotted by Shau'ri and Mandras so that her husband would see the sun for the first time in days. She'd stolen the tablet from Dan'yel's bag and Mandras had left it out by the river side where Dan'yel loved to rest. It is half agony and half ecstasy for the scholar. He cannot be unhappy when he is with her, but he had almost finished translating the last scroll of a set that suggested that Helen of Troy had in fact been a host of the Goa'uld, Hathor. Paris's judgement had been to choose a new host for her, and he had sought out the most famous women in the Ancient world, stealing them away from under the disjointed noses of the other Goa'uld.

Hathor-Helen had been so pleased by his gift of the most beautiful Queen of the day that she had made him her Prince and fled her then husband, Menelaus otherwise known as Hephaestus, to Ilium, or Troy as it was now remembered. He wondered what modern scholars would have made of the Trojan War being fought not over a human woman but a Goa'uld Queen, not to mention the Trojan horse being no horse but a rebel Jaffa, his pouch hiding the weapon that brought the walls of Troy down around their ears. Odysseus's great journey had been through the Stargate. He had lost his home co-ordinates after pissing off a powerful System Lord, Daniel guessed one called something like Poseidon. That had done nothing for his prospects of survival or his chance of returning to his home-world where his beautiful wife Penelope waited for him.

He tells none of this to the others. The power of Hathor's aphrodisiac has not been so soon forgotten by any of them. They do not need to know that the stories that delight them are based in fact that has been all too real for years past. Most of all, he hides it from gentle Maia, who deserves no such torture as to know the fate of her parasite's previous host. It was only last week that she had first teased him about his gathering flowers for Shau'ri, only for him to sneak a single white blossom into her red hair when she wasn't watching. Shau'ri had glowered in pretended jealousy and then kissed him and whispered what she would do to him later when they were alone. His scarlet blushes and the lost in paradise look in his eyes had caused the others to laugh themselves stupid.

It is his secret joy, too, that he believes he has met blind Homer, and he imagines what it would be like to tease Jack about the differences between the practical-joker and his beloved H. Simpson. The old man died the day after Daniel first found him, but it was already a memory to treasure forever. The words they speak over the campfire are his apprentices' memories of his poetry and day-by-day Daniel writes them down, not in English but in Antique Greek. He may never hear the true bard's version but this is close enough. The scrolls are innumerable and unfamiliar, so much is lost between the time of this great Homer and the next, and he whispers the words night by night into his wife's ear, losing himself in them and her.

The stone tablet is the one from P5X-606 but he barely registers the strangeness of its carving now. She waits for him beneath their tree and after so long apart, he finds no peace in paradise without her.

He returns on feet made swift by love to find Shau'ri still resting, her head turned away from him and her hand carelessly holding a pomegranate in her lap.

It's getting late. They need to return to the Haven to prepare the dinner. He plucks a flower that reminds him of a daisy and traces it across her face to wake her. Even if his gentle touch fails, his inadvertent sneeze ought to rouse her but she sleeps on.

"Shau'ri," he whispers, leaning in closer, "beloved wife, sleep no longer."

The coldness of her skin startles him. She is never cold.

They would joke that the desert was in her blood that Abydonian heat burned within her still. In bed, she would complain of his feet being like the water from the deepest pool and he would tell her ice was colder. Then she would remind him that she was a mere desert rose and had never seen ice. It was stupid Earth stuff and in his anxiety to soothe her non-existent fears that she was not enough to hold him to Abydos or wherever the Haven was, the coldness of his feet would be forgotten.

She is cold now, though, and unmoving. He rests his hand against her cheek but already knows the truth. He sweeps her up into his arms and gazes into her beloved brown eyes, their brilliance dulled by more than sleep. He does not see the wound on her ankle. She had stood to pluck a fruit and not seen the danger before it claimed her. When she did see it, it was far, far too late.

Cradling her against his chest as Jack once cradled Charlie, Daniel sits beneath the pomegranate tree and wishes to go where his wife is.

The not-a-snake-but-a-god slithers away into the underbrush.

This time it does not grant his wish.

Hours pass.

Tears do not fall.

He has shed enough for three lifetimes and there are none to mark this final passing.

Night comes on tar feathers, marring their faces with shadows.

It is the darkest night Daniel has ever known.

* * *

"Dr. Fraiser!" SG-1 is screaming for her and it is on feet of lead that she races to Daniel's side. 

"What?" She is out of breath, more from concealed anxiety than the sprint.

"He's crying."

The tears that do not fall in the twilight world where Shau'ri is only newly dead cascade here where she passed years before.

"How is that possible?"

O'Neill gives Carter a look that says 'I thought _I_ was supposed to be the stupid one'.

"I mean, Daniel isn't there to cry, is he?" Sam was staring at the monitors, waiting for the brain patterns to do something other than flat-line, to change into waves and tell her that yes, Daniel was still in there somewhere. They failed to even flicker.

Dr Fraiser shook her head. "According to all my tests, Daniel's brain dead, and sometimes physiological reactions occur even after death has occurred."

"No."

"Teal'c?" Dr Fraiser spun with the rest of SG-1 to face the Jaffa.

For the first time since they'd come through the Stargate and seen Daniel fall, the warrior wasn't nearly frowning. "Daniel Jackson is not brain dead. The dead do not weep."

"Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep." Sam quoted softly without really knowing why.

Jack ignored her. "Daniel isn't in his body so why is he crying?"

Then, abruptly as they began the tears stopped.

Jack groaned deeply and pushed his hands through his hair. He could swear he had ten new grey hairs since the morning. He'd given up on the idea of being a brunette for any more years, but he'd really been hoping he wouldn't be as bald as Homer Simpson before the next year. Daniel's latest trip to the infirmary was grinding that hope to grey dust. "Just wake up, Danny, please."

The prayer was as soft as the touch of a butterfly's wing and for a moment, the brain monitors bleep. Daniel was coming back to them.

The pattern is gone as soon as it appears, only the slight fluctuation above the base line on the sheet showing it was ever there.

The sleeper dreams on.

It is the watchers turn to cry.

* * *

This is not Greece, Daniel knows that now, because if it was, the entrance to the Underworld would be a mythological place and the River of Lethe would not be real. 

He stands at the mouth of the cave and stares into the black depths, almost as dark and vast as his grief, but only almost. Nothing is as all-consuming as his pain.

The soft slap of waves on sand reminds him that there is a river to be crossed.

The deep growl of a dog reminds him that there is a guardian to be passed.

The clink of coin on coin reminds him that there is a ferryman to be paid.

The hiss of a snake reminds him that there is a god to be supplicated.

There is nothing and no need to remind him that there is a woman to be brought back to life and light and hope.

* * *

Teal'c waits, in Jack's phrase "as patient as a brick", by the side of Daniel's bed. Jack can be made to leave with physical force, but not even the bravest marine is willing to laid a hand on the sentinel Jaffa. 

Teal'c knows that Daniel Jackson is strong, that he has been through much and come through whole. He is not a trained warrior but he has the bravest spirit of anyone he has ever known. He has forgiven Teal'c the unforgivable crimes of the abduction and murder of his wife. He has a soul that is pure. He has survived dying at least six times at the last count and has faced down more System-Lord-False-Gods than Teal'c has had staff weapon burns. He will survive to laugh again at his friend's untranslatable Jaffa jokes.

For Teal'c, this knowledge is absolute but it does not stop Teal'c from wanting to punch and crush and _hurt_ the thing that has done this to his archaeologist. There is nothing he can do but wait, however, and Teal'c has long since learned the value of patience when waiting. O'Neill wastes his energy on fretful motion and nagging questions. Teal'c understands that to truly wait is to sit silently, eyes open and seeing, entire being concentrated on the bright spot of hope that comes at the end of waiting, and to be very, very, very angry. This absolute fury can be sublimated into patience. Revenge is a dish best served cold and a favourite proverb on Chulak is 'a watched corpse never cools'.

The Jaffa can only hope that it will not be Daniel Jackson's corpse that is cooling when the time comes to unleash his rage.

* * *

Shau'ri is dead. 

He has gained and lost the world again.

There is no sun if it cannot shine on her face.

There is no breeze if it cannot stir her hair.

There is no music if it cannot move her feet.

There is no fire if it cannot warm her bones.

There is no food if it cannot nourish her body.

There is no life if it cannot be shared with her.

There is nothing without her.

He breathes deeply and lets the darkness take him.

_As if it hadn't already._

* * *

"Sir." Sam is standing by the bedside as Jack stirs himself from a sleep that has lasted hours and feels like seconds. The bed in the VIP room has become a home for SG-1 in recent days. Janet orders one of them to it every few hours and sends the largest, toughest, most whine-resistant orderlies to check that they remember to sleep. One hovers now, cowed by Carter's glare but more afraid of the petite Doctor's wrath than either the Colonel or the Major. "Sir!" 

"What, Carter?" Special ops do not allow for slow waking. Jack is fully conscious from archaeologist-haunted REM dreams in seconds.

"It's Dad, sir." Jack's boots are back on and his jacket halfway over his shoulders before the next words are out of her mouth. "He says he can help Daniel."

Bullets are over-rated as comparatives of speed. Jacks with Daniels to save are far better measurements of velocity. Bullets move in miles per second. Jacks move in electron vibrations per parsec.

Jacob is unsurprised by his speedy entry but Selmac raises an eyebrow at his sliding stop before them.

"You can help Daniel?" Jack isn't panting because panting would leave no breath to bark out the question. He only allows his chest to heave when the words are fired out.

"I believe so," it's Selmac that answers, Jacob feeling too aware of what Jack's response will be if they can't help the archaeologist.

"Dad!" Sam was running behind Jack only to be left in his wake. Now she casts her glance between the men, her breath catching in her throat as she sees the hope on the Colonel's face.

"Sam," Jacob takes control. Selmac means well but doesn't always understand the emotions of the Tau'ri when it comes to friendship. The Tok'ra are less keenly attached to each other, except for their great loves, and the depth of the bond between SG-1 can be hard for them to fathom. The last thing he wants is for a well-meant but misguided phrase to cause Jack to attack them, verbally or otherwise. "Jack, we think we can help Daniel."

"You think?" The scorn poured into the words is enough to give Jacob a cold-burn. "The almighty-Tok'ra only _think_ they can help Daniel? Last I heard you guys could do just about anything you God-damn-wanted."

"Colonel," Jacob is aware of how strong his daughter is as she puts a hand on Jack's arm and forces him to calm down. He couldn't have done the same thing in her place if his life had depended on it. An angry Jack was a force to be reckoned with but a worried Jack was a force to be avoided at all costs.

"SG-1 to the Gate-Room! SG-1 to the Gate-Room!" The intercom system was never more cursed by Jack than at that moment. Jacob grinned internally as Selmac voiced deep gratitude for the reprieve.

"Whatever it is, do it." Jack was off running again, slow enough for Sam to keep up this time, and Jacob was left alone with Selmac in the briefing room.

"God help whoever's come calling," he muttered to his Tok'ra other half, and started the walk down to the Infirmary with a worried heart.

* * *

There is nothing in the cave but the darkness of absolute night. His small lamp doesn't do much to light the way even before the oil runs out after the thirtieth hour. He stumbles through blindly, hands stretched in front of him. 

There is nothing in his mind but the darkness of absolute grief. He is not the best friend of Jack O'Neill, leading light of the SGC, for nothing though. The air is warm, soothing even, and the pack of food he has brought with him is lasting well.

There is no way of calculating the passage of time. His watch stopped working months ago, so he talks to the ghosts that surround him instead. He is in Greece, this is the Underworld and he is a scholar. He does what Jack would have done under the circumstances and reviews what he knows.

In the darkness, the Latin is comforting. Homer's passages too few, he walks with Aeneas and the Sybil into the abyss.

Later it is others who keep him company, Frost, Blake and most of all, Dante. Others do not love the end of his Divine Comedy, but Daniel finds comfort in the Paradiso. The book is of love and in the endless dark it is a candle. The light it gives does not spread far, but Jack would be muttering about "better to light a candle than curse the darkness" and Daniel has been foulmouthed enough for the day.

Cerberus is huge. Daniel imagined him no smaller but did not think of the rank stench of three-headed dog and Stygian slime. The dog's breath is magnified, tripled, by its mouths and if there were air to breathe down here, Daniel would be choking.

He has spent hours thinking of all the means to trick his way past the dog. Heracles who dragged him out of the gloom into the King's palace was stronger than Teal'c. Orpheus was a greater musician than Elvis. He realised his own weakness and took strength from it.

The Guardian of the Underworld is tricked into letting him in by the simplest method Daniel knows, learned from Jack on that first Abydos mission: bribery with Fifth Avenue bars.

* * *

"His brain patterns are improving." Ellen, Janet's most trusted staff nurse, has flown on rainbow coloured wings to deliver the joyous news to her boss. 

They both know whom she means.

Lightning bolts are slower than Janet as she runs into Daniel's room and finds Jacob Carter standing above him.

He looks over at her wearily. "I've done all I can for now."

"It's more than we've been able to do." Daniel's colour has increased and yes, Ellen was right, those EKG patterns are definitely improved.

"Doctor," Jacob looks weary now and Janet knows that however he looks, he must feel worse. It was the Tok'ra that recommended SG-1's investigation of P5X-606. No-one is responsible for what happened to Daniel, but he blames himself as much as she knows Jack does. "What happened to him?"

It's all she can do not to shrug. Exhaustion grips her shoulders into place. "We don't know. He was fine until he exited the Stargate and then he was dying. As it is, only Anise's pacemaker device is keeping his heart rate steady and as for the rest of his organs, I don't know how much longer they can withstand the stress of whatever this is."

"Anise's what?" Jacob has barely spoken before Selmac takes control. "We know of no such device."

"But…" Janet's fingers fall from toying nervously with her stethoscope. "The device, it came with your message, she said it was of no use to the Tok'ra but that we might have need of it."

Selmac-Jacob's face contorts in confusion. When they speak, it is in Jacob's voice. "Message?"


	5. Love is Not A Victory March

The chapter title is from Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as sung definitively by Jeff Buckley on his album "Grace" (I recommend the legacy edition). Apologies for the slight delay in the posting of this chapter. The next should be back on track.

This is where the rating applies. If you're sensitive and prefer not to read the darker material following the line Daniel sleeps against his will, skip the section onto Jack being Jack. No flames please, that part is dark and nasty, whumping Danny harder than I usually recommend, and you have now been warned.

I disclaim.

**Love Is Not A Victory March, It's a Cold and It's a Broken Hallelujah**

"You dare come before me without a gift and beg of me this boon?" The God – for who else could thunder so? – raved at the archaeologist.

"I bring gifts," Daniel replied as un-cowed by Hades as he had been by Osiris, Apophis, Ra and Anubis. "The Prized Cup of Ra'ne'kel." Abydonian for false-gods-with-chips-on-their-shoulders, but Hades didn't know that. It was laid before the Lord of the Underworld and seemed diminished in the darkness. "Time." Daniel's digital watch joined the cup, glowing faintly. "And the food of the Gods." His very last Fifth Avenue bar, parted with most regretfully of all.

"Paltry thing," Hades scorned the food but Persephone's hand reached out as soon as his attention left it.

The slight moan that escaped the back of her throat as she bit down and the wash of bright colour that flooded her cheeks made the God spin to face her, dark robes whirling about him.

"Wife?" His voice comes out as a softened snarl and she faltered. Daniel realised that even when speaking to his bride, Hades could not stop being the Ruler of the Dead.

Persephone ran; her beautiful face pale again and contorted in fear.

Hades smashed his fist against his throne's arm. "Women!"

The last time Daniel had heard that tone it had been when Jack had been yelling "Archaeologists!"

At the thought of Jack, his fearful homesickness tripled instantly. He already missed each and every one of SG-1, but the pain for Jack was worst. He shook it off as he had once shaken away the desperate need for his parents. The act left his soul quivering softly inside. Not a trace was displayed on his face.

"Hades, God of the Underworld, Lord of the Third Kingdom, Ruler of the Dead, hail." The invocation rolled easily off his tongue. The mythology might be Greek rather than Egyptian, but it was as familiar as the names of the Gospels. "I beg of you this boon, I wish my wife to be returned to life."

"You want your wife back?" Hades pressed his chin against his fingers. "Do you have any idea how many requests for returns to life I've heard?"

Daniel shakes his head.

"Not one for more than three thousand years." The God grinned at him savagely. "You are the first since Orpheus."

Jackson waits in silence. Like all Gods, Hades loves the sound of his own voice and it's been a long time since he's had such an attentive listener.

Hades speaks for minutes, rambling about his power and the lack of initiative of modern heroes, who simultaneously ignore the history of their illustrious forebears and fail to come up with really interesting deaths of their own. At last, he recalls why the archaeologist stands before him. "So, who is your wife?"

"Shau'ri, daughter of Kasuf of Abydos." The words are beloved and leave Daniel's mouth sweetly.

"Ah, the former host of the Goa'uld Amaunet." Daniel refuses to react. Hades is impressed. His God-voice usually cows mortals into submission with only the "ah".

"Shau'ri, daughter of Kasuf of Abydos," Daniel repeats, "Sister of Skaa'ra of Abydos, mother of the Harcesis child Shi-fu, wife of Daniel Jackson of the Tau'ri. She was once the host of the Goa'uld Amaunet but she was freed from that burden. Amaunet is dead."

"And so is Shau'ri." Hades tilts his head thoughtfully. "If I offered you back Shau'ri of Abydos but only as the host of Amaunet, giving you two lives in one body, would you accept?"

Daniel should have known the question was coming. This was Hades, cruellest of the gods. Others are more capricious he is even-handedly horrible. His confusion lasts only a moment. "She is Shau'ri. To bring her back as the host of Amaunet would be to condemn her to a living death."

"So you would leave her here?" Hades steepled his fingers and looked over their tips to the man standing so proudly before him.

"I would take her as the host of Amaunet and save her from that living death as I take her from this one." Fire isn't blue, but if it were, the brightest shade would match the flash of Daniel's eyes. "I would carry her to Cimmeria to Thor's Hammer, if she cursed me every step of the way, I would free her from the Goa'uld again if it took my life to do it."

"You love her so much?" Hades voice is not ice cold, it's at absolute zero, yet a spark of interest dances in his eyes. "You would die for her?"

"Yes." The defiance in Daniel's voice stokes that spark into a forest fire.

That fire burns hotter than Daniel can imagine. The Devil himself would be singed by it. Hades leans forwards, his entire being focused on the man before him. "Would you live for her as well?"

At which point Daniel should have been very, very afraid but wasn't. There was nothing he wouldn't do to regain Shau'ri. Heroes are people willing to sacrifice everything they have and are and can be for something or someone outside their own selves. No one ever bothers to wonder why there aren't any old heroes.

* * *

"What the hell?" Jack watches as the Goa'uld sinuously saunters across the Gateroom past the shocked marines. Her smell is a pungent aroma of ambrosia and attar of roses. 

"I am Demeter." She is beautiful, a sunlit field of ripe wheat, a rose in full bloom, the delicate blossom of a water-lily, fresh and gorgeous.

General Hammond's rich voice echoes through the room. "Why is this woman not under restraint?"

Her head tilts on its lovely long neck and she casts Jack an innocent look. "You would restrain me? I mean no harm, I come to help."

"Yeah, well we've heard that before," Jack snorts. "Marines!"

She blinks and the marines find themselves asleep. "I am not a Goa'uld." She pronounces the word the Tok'ra way. "You may not understand me and who I am for he who would is mostly-dead, is he not?"

"Colonel O'Neill, would you like to explain to me what the hell is going on?"

"I would if I could sir, but I don't know myself." Jack shifts into his questioning a crazy-Danny-lover position. "Miss Demeter, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but who in the whole pantheon of false gods are you?"

"Not a god."

Jack waves his hands. "Well thank someone for that."

"Sir!" Carter complains briefly before Teal'c's dignified look cuts her off.

"I believe Demeter is one of those referred to by the Goa'uld as the Ter'fin'aki, O'Neill."

"And who are they when they're at home?"

"Those who are to be avoided at all costs."

"I like her already."

"You have lost your Daniel Jackson. I have lost my daughter."

"Danny can't be picking up girls, he's mostly dead, for Christ's sake."

"The daughter of Demeter, in traditional Roman mythology, was Proserpina or Persephone, sir. She was abducted by Hades to the Underworld where having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds she was forced to spend 6 months of the year with him and the other 6 with her mother on Earth."

"I knew that."

Carter and Teal'c exchange longsuffering looks.

"The snake thing said he nibbled Daniel. Now he's hanging out with some chick in the Underworld?"

* * *

Daniel sleeps against his will. The days have been long since he last slept and Morpheus cannot be denied longer without caffeine and there is none here. 

Shau'ri's face haunts his dreams. That is nothing new. Every night since they first met he's dreamed of her. On Abydos, bodies curled around each other like nestling kittens, he slept only to dream of her. Even unconscious in sleep, they were never apart. Together, they'd dreamed of all that was and is and would be in an ecstasy of hope. Now his dreams of her are different. The same one recurs every night. He dreams not of what is or will be but of what was so many times before. It's becoming as much a part of him as his own name.

Her body moves familiarly with his in the universe's oldest dance. He remembers this bliss from four hundred and twenty-three hot Abydonian nights. This is how he always thinks of her; her dark curls cascading heavenly over his chest; her mouth alternating between caressing his skin and caressing his name. He draws her so close that it is physically impossible to be nearer and she clings to him with equal intensity in the coolness of the night. The firelight flickers over their bodies with a heat that pales in comparison with that which they create.

She never looks more beautiful to him than now, yet as her shining eyes meet his, he sees only ugliness. Her eyes, her pillow, her bed, everything is golden. It is Shau'ri's face and Amaunet's mind. This is not Abydos but Apophis's home world. The memory is not Daniel's but his. Daniel's stomach turns and if he had control of this dream, this body, he would pull away with a cry.

As it is, he is trapped into the motions that follow and even in his revulsion there is enforced ecstasy. Whoever did this first, it's Daniel's experience now. He is the one with the scratched back, the neck bruised by fierce kisses, the hair clenched between repulsive loving fingers. The woman beneath him writhes in pleasure, in two-toned sultriness she calls "Dan'yel" in her satisfaction and he murmurs back "Beloved, beloved", not in Abydonian or English but Goa'uld. He is Daniel but he is Apophis too, he must feel the enjoyment equally as both. She is Amaunet though, not Shau'ri, and whatever gratification she feels is denied her host.

Shi-fu was conceived this night. Along with the memories of technology and torture that Oma wisely buried deep within him, there is this. When he showed Daniel what would be if the absolute power of that knowledge were given to him, he gave him this as well. When he had all the knowledge of the Goa'uld, wielding the greatest power on Earth, saving the world and damning himself, Daniel slept alone and no one ever asked him why. They thought they knew but they didn't. If asked they would have said that he was loyal to Shau'ri, and he is, but not as they think it.

In the briefing room when Shi-fu had first come to them and given him the vision of the future, he had been so diplomatic. He had said only "Fathered the child" as Jack struggled for words that they seemed almost innocuous, but the truth is so much simpler and harder to say. This action may be fathering a child but it isn't love making, having sex or even fucking. It's rape of the mind as well as the body and Daniel will never forget it, can never be allowed to forget it. He never did in the vision. Every night for a year he sleeps, endlessly alone, and in his dreams he rapes his wife, for whom he would sooner die than risk hurting, and every night he knows that what he suffers is a grain of sand to the Gobi desert of her pain. The memory of that year lingers always.

She is always on his mind. People think they understand that sentence but they don't. Shau'ri is with him in every breath he breathes, every thought he thinks, every sip of coffee he gulps so hastily down and if he winces at the hot burn of his drink, no one notices that his hand trembles at the memory of her pain. Daniel would rather be trapped forever insane and at the mercy of Machello's device, would rather die, would rather be a host than ever remember this again. He fervently believes that he has seen it enough, been through enough, to lay this pain to one side forever.

Unfortunately for Daniel, Hades has other ideas.

* * *

Demeter tilted her head at Teal'c in hope of understanding. "Chick? I am afraid my grasp of your language does not include the vernacular, Colonel Jack O'Neill." 

"He means girl." Sam put in before Teal'c can think of a dignified but unfortunately insulting response and Jack can dig himself deeper.

"Look, Demeter, we'd love to stand here all day and chat about American slang, but right now we've got a butt ugly Goa'uld headed our way with a fleet of motherships and about ten minutes to get out that gate and kick her ass before we forfeit our world. I sympathise, I really do, with your problems with your daughter but unless you know where Danny is and how to get him back, this conversation is over."

"Minthe approaches." She said it so calmly that Jack nearly strangled her on the spot.

He sighed long-sufferingly. "Yes, Mint-toothpaste does. That's why we have to go and at the moment you're standing in the middle of our means out of here."

"This stops you from rescuing your friend?"

"Yes, it does." Carter cut in before Jack can answer.

"Then she must be dealt with first." Demeter blinked slowly. "It is done."

"What?"

"General Hammond," Teal'c intoned, turning his face to the bullet proofed window. "Does Minthe's fleet still approach?"

"Sir," They can only just hear Walter through the General's microphone. "She's gone."

"Gone?"

"Her ships, they just… well sir, they… they…"

"Spit it out son!"

"Fer cryin' out loud!"

"They turned into blue whales and fell into the ocean, sir. Those that didn't turn into pots of begonias and hit Minneapolis."

Every member of the SGC but one mouthed wordless syllables of shock and stared at Demeter. Teal'c alone raised an eyebrow and said, "I too have read Douglas Adams. Surely the impact of the crash would kill the whales?"

"What?"

"The power required for that kind of huge mass-transmutation must be incredible!"

"What?"

"They were still three days away! How is that speed of travel even possible?"

"Huh?"

"The whales live. The begonias also." She smiled. "I am Ter'fin'aki. Anything that can be done will be done."

"And the entire fleet being turned into blue whales and begonias?"

"Could be done."

"Right." Jack considered it all for a minute. "So could you make the Bears win the Superbowl?"

"It is done."

"Alright!"

"Sir!"

"Oh fer cryin' out loud, what? Mint-toothpaste is whale-meat and the threat's gone. Can't a guy have a little fun with his sports team results?"

"Daniel?"

"Oops?"

* * *

"Your wife loves you more than life itself." 

Daniel waits in silence. The Underworld-God, like so many of the gods he has met, loves the sound of his own voice.

"Mine does not. I took her from the world of sunlight into this land of the shade and she will not forgive me for it. Do you know what it is to live with an angry woman for 5,000 years?"

Daniel shakes his head. He can have no comprehension. Shau'ri's anger was always fierce as the midday sun and as short lived. She would scream and throw something at his head and then he would apologise and they would fall into bed and forget the world for the rest of the day.

"Make my wife love me and I will return you to the world of light and life."

"I came for my wife. I won't leave without her."

"She is dead. I cannot return her. Her soul must remain here."

"You let Eurydice go until Orpheus looked back and broke the bargain."

"Ah, I had forgotten you were a scholar."

"I would walk from here with your word that she was behind me and never look back if you let me."

He means it. The agony of doubt would be nothing to the agony of regret.

"I know. I do not ask it of you."

"Name your price."

"My wife's love. Your heart's tears."

"I haven't wept since Shau'ri died."

"Then I will make you weep."

"I don't know if I can."

"You would walk out of the Underworld with your wife and never look back but you cannot shed a tear? Then I will have to help you. But first, Persephone!"

The girl approaches in her white robes and Daniel realises she is impossibly beautiful. She is a spring dawn, a rosebud bursting into bloom, a dewdrop on a perfect bluebell.

She is nothing compared to Shau'ri but when he looks back at Hades, he realises the depth of love that the God holds for her.

"Make her love me," he whispers as Persephone darts away again, a ghost of life in a world of the dead, "And your wife is free."

Daniel knew then that he was going to be in the Underworld for a very long time.

* * *

"But begonias?" 


	6. And If Life is Just a Highway

Chapter 5, mark 2. Apologies for how long it's taken. Cleo-The-Muse, bless her for having the guts to do so, pointed out how bad the first version of this was so it has undergone a serious rewrite. There is at least 1 more chapter to come. Thanks for staying with me and I hope you enjoy. If something doesn't make sense, tell me and I'll either try to explain or revise it so it does. Thanks again to my beta MonkeyAxman1302 who has stayed with me despite the weird ideas that appear on my computer screen.

Finally, a darkness warning. It is necessary, again, to Danny-whump. The first section of this is perfectly safe, no Dannys were harmed in the writing of it, but especially the second section did require a certain degree of archaeologist-torture.

I disclaim. SG-1 and Stargate are not mine. The title of this chapter is from the Meatloaf song "Objects in the Rear View Mirror" by Jim Steinman on the album "Bat Out of Hell 2".

**And if Life is Just a Highway, Then the Soul is Just a Car **

The God Lachesis, known to SG-1 as Snake-Thing, sucked on his tail meditatively. The device he'd sent should keep his pet breathing for as long as it was necessary. Soon, so soon, the world would be his and he would show the Goa'uld exactly who was the boss around the Universe.

Deposed from the Ter'fin'aki for his crimes that weren't really crimes more like misdemeanours such as any God might indulge his youthful self in, Lachesis had retained many of his powers. He twisted Fate the way others twisted threads. Sharp-fanged, he snipped them too.

His visions are strange, the future warping and reforming like his own body as he slithers through the undergrowth. Jack's borrowed memories, stolen as he wriggled beneath the temple altar, lent Lachesis-The-God enough knowledge to write the tablet with a little help from his slave-host of the decade. Yet three thousand years had passed while he waited for the right accent to emerge from the Stargate. Far away, his host lay silently waiting. Chicago, the Windy City, was about to become the First City of the God Lachesis's New Empire of the Sun.

The time is coming. He stirs from his position and wraps himself around his slave's throat. Soon enough, she will be sent to the Underworld too but with no return. His trap, so long laid, is sprung.

Maia learned what fear was as the host of a Goa'uld for hundreds of years then thousands more trapped and dreaming in the sarcophagus with her parasite drinking her fears in like ambrosia. What she feels now is no less real and yet she feels almost capable of defending herself. Daniel and Shau'ri showed her that love can be greater than death. Now she holds the thought of them and resists the snake's grip around her neck. He will try to strangle her, she thinks, but she will resist and deep in her heart she thinks of Daniel's expression when he saw Shau'ri again for the first time.

Her spirit is powerful, not as strong as some it's true, but then he is Ter'fin'aki or was. Power is power. He can use it, turn it to his will.

With a snap of his jaws he breaks her life's thread and recreates the DHD. He drops from her shoulders as it roars to life. She doesn't realise it until she reaches the river, but she is already dead. As her body falls to the soft earth of the bank, her healed spirit flees to the Fields of Elysium and at last she finds peace.

* * *

Daniel ties her hands tightly, her fingers blue at the tips, her body taut against the bed. She is his. Every particle of her being is his, her very soul is sold to him. He knows she does not love him, will never love him, yet she can never leave him either. He has made sure of that.

"Bitch!" He spits in her face, her beauty an insult to him. Her traitorous body shifts against him, her chest rising to his, her arms straining against her bonds, all pleading for his love and forgiveness.

"Dan'yel, I never…"

"You know you did." He has seen her with his own eyes. Seen her flirt with those beautiful lashes of hers, fluttering like butterflies to the yemina flower of Heru'ur's smile. Seen her lay those treacherous fingers against his chest, drawing them slowly with lying ease against his chest, patterns of lust and treachery. He had burned Heru'ur for that, cut him asunder as Seth had once cut Osiris, destroying his host's beautiful body.

"He has paid for his crimes." Daniel lays the blade of his knife against her cheek, but does not cut. Her host is too lovely to destroy so simply. "Now you will pay for yours. You imagined that I did not know of your love for the blond-haired Tau'ri, imagined that I, Apophis, could not see that in Heru'ur you saw the reflection of your host's widower?"

"Dan'yel," he is caught in this dream, horrified by it as he turns the knife against Shau'ri for loving _him_ and yet not loving him. "The Ter'fin'aki come."

"You lie." This time the blade is closer to her throat and it draws a scarlet ribbon of blood. Daniel rages against his own actions and yet continues. Her beauty is as intoxicating as ever and his body stirs. Her cleverness has always entranced him.

"I do not. I did not take Heru'ur into my bed; he has no power to please a woman." It is a statement he does not believe. Heru'ur has always found bed companions as easily amongst the Goa'uld as amongst his slaves. Yet Heru'ur will need a new host before he can please another woman. "You saw me coaxing him into telling me the news he is so pregnant with. The Tau'ri rose up and destroyed Ra. Harcesis wishes to return yet fears the Ter'fin'aki's actions."

He rips the dress from her body and notes her breath catching in her throat, the flutter of fear as delicate as that of flirtation. He was right to choose this host for the body of his beloved.

"Bitch." Daniel repeats, more softly this time, and his tongue licks away the spit that still lingers on her cheek. The taste of her tears lingers, from when he had beaten her, "What use is this to me?"

"I know how to quell the Ter'fin'aki." Now her sinuous movements are seductive, an attempt to arouse him to action. "We will rise with Ba'al and Heru'ur and rid ourselves of all those who oppose us."

She gasps, he grunts, and Daniel's hands find her neck, their bodies intertwined and bleeding. "Tell me."

Ammonet looks at him with Shau'ri's dark exotic eyes and smirks, the power he held returned to her. "There is a prophecy from the Fates themselves, of a power more ancient and powerful than the Ancients, that tells of the power that can defeat them." Then she speaks the forbidden words. "The Harcesis child alone can turn the power of the Ter'fin'aki."

He does not untie her but takes her as she is, fingers blue and constricting.

That night, and every night after, he takes her to his bed in the hope he will father a child on her body knowing that the child will be more powerful than himself and a threat. Thus every night in Tartarus, Daniel takes Ammonet to his bed and hears his name called in two-toned sultriness; every night, Apophis finds heaven in his wife's arms and Daniel finds damnation; and every night, Daniel finds new reason to help Hades to make love to Persephone and new cause to hate himself for all that happened to Shau'ri.

How much longer his mind could endure the torture of remembering even the Gods would not tell, nor could they if they cared.

* * *

Hades kneels at Persephone's feet, staring at the ground and not daring to look into her face.

27 languages, 5,000 years of poetry, and an instinctive love of words had lent Daniel the grace of the Muses which he attempted to instil in the God.

Having watched that dark-visage scowl in anger, he took no chances with his first choice of poem. As Yeats's words spilled out with ambrosial sweetness, Persephone looked on her husband for the first time with understanding.

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

It had taken three months of careful training, during which time Daniel had discovered Shau'ri wandering through the Elysian Fields twice. Each time he had been permitted the moment because Persephone had bestowed a kiss upon Hades cold skinned cheek.

Day by day, he teaches the darkest of the Gods to create sunlight for the sake of his beloved wife. Night by night, Daniel dreams of the darkest of the Goa'ulds to annihilate sanity for the sake of _his_ beloved wife. It is all for love and yet love is not enough. He remembered singing old Beatles songs to Shau'ri on Abydos, of her love for the melodies and the halting at first then smoother Abydonian translations, and now the only one that rings true is "Yesterday".

Every night he visited Tartarus, and there he had relived all he had once done to her, her and a thousand like her, as the memories Shi-fu once gave him boiled through his mind. Daniel wondered how much longer it would be before the pain of those memories drove him mad. It was the price Hades demanded, to stay was to save Shau'ri and to leave immediately was to save his sanity.

For three months the God wooed his wife, dampening his fury, biting back sarcastic remarks, learning by heart all the Egyptian and Abydonian love poems the scholar could recall. For Daniel, it was much like training Jack in diplomacy and teaching a Tok'ra good Earth manners.

For the last week, Hades had been bringing her gifts that had brought smiles to her usually tear-streaked face. The next day Persephone was due to return to the world above and Daniel would be trapped with a gloomy and furious Hades for another 6 months, slowly going insane as the visions broke his soul.

Surely Byron was infallible though?

"She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meets in her aspect and her eyes;

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,—

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent."

Persephone is kissing Hades like there can be no tomorrow. Daniel takes that as his cue to leave.

Hours later, Hades comes to Daniel's cell. "She loves me but it may not last past her next trip to the upper world."

"You promised me…"

"I do not break my promise. Your wife is free to go. What I offer may make you stay however." Hades draws back his cloak and Mel and Claire Jackson appear behind him, as they had been the day they died, spectacled and wondering. Charlie O'Neill emerges and with him, oh bless the God, Shau'ri Jackson stands before him.

"You can stay here, with Shau'ri and your parents. You can return to the life you knew above with Mandras, Maia and your beloved Shau'ri to write of Homer for the Ages to come, or you can hear what is needed to save your Earth and all your friends."

"What?"

The ghosts stand behind Hades silent but pleading, their hands outstretched to him, their entire beings focused on his living warmth. Daniel dare not look at them as he listens to the God's terrible words.

"They think the threat is Minthe. My mother-in-law has dealt with her. The threat is from the God of the planet you call P5X-606. If he can, he will take your planet and make it subject to his majesty."

In his head, Daniel can hear Jack asking "So what's new?"

"He will not end your world but he will break your team and then the darkness will fall across the world. All will be lost. Only you can save mankind."

With the dead surrounding him, the linguist loses his tongue. "Huh?"

"You carry the bite of the snake yet you live. You can kill him before he kills your team but you must go now. You must know you will die if you triumph, live if you fail, if only for the brief time before the other Gods crush the rebellion of the upstart Snake."

He closes his eyes and realises that despite Persephone's love, Hades is still a cruel god. This is his test.

"You have stolen your way to the door of the Underworld once. You bribed my guard-dog with chocolate. You paid my ferryman with fine words of poetry and forewent the coin that is his right. You crossed the River of Lethe but did not forget. You will not do this again. When you return to Earth, you will remember nothing of this place, only that you lost your wife again and the madness of despair that came with that grief. You are exiled from my kingdom forever. Once you leave, you may never return."

Daniel looks from the God to his wife and back again. Temptation stands before him, for who will know he damned the world if his soul never leaves Paradise?

The answer is as cold as Shau'ri's skin, as hard as the coverstone that killed his parents, as unyielding as the bullet that splattered Charlie O'Neil's brains across the floor. He will know and there will be no Paradise for him.

"You have seen the Valley of the Shadow of Death, have walked in it with Death as your companion, have tricked the very Gods into doing your will, saving your world is such a little thing by comparison, yet you will need to remember all that happens here to do it." The Gods see something in his stance and Hades' tone hardens. "To leave, you must walk through my land without a word or a glance behind you. The souls of those you love will walk with you. You will not see them. They will call your name. You will not answer them. They will beg you for a touch. You will not heed them. To remember all this to save your world, you must give up your wife to this place. These are my terms, do you accept them?"

"Dan'yel, please, no."

She is the world to him. He would kill for her, has killed for her, but it did not save her. If he destroys the world, he becomes the man he could have been if Shi-fu's vision had come to pass. He would murder everything inside himself in order to save her and he would lose her and himself doing it. He stares deeply into his beloved wife's eyes, knowing that if he speaks the final word, this is the last time he will ever see her again. He has read of what happens to those souls exiled from the Underworld, their wanderings and wailings, he knows what is to come but there is no choice.

Hades is as implacable as Death itself.

Feeling as if he had leaped from the balcony he once hung from and has yet to hit the ground, he braces himself for impact and speaks.

"Yes."

The word breaks free of his lips and screams its liberty. The choice is made. Shau'ri's fate is sealed and Daniel is damned.

"Not one word, Daniel. You must be silent until you reach the light."

Daniel covers his eyes and brushes past the ghosts that feel so real, so alive, that their breath raises the hair on his arms.

"Dan'yel, please, do not leave me here again. Dan'yel, please!"

"Danny, speak to us!"

"Baby, don't leave us again!"

He runs.

He trips.

He falls.

He never looks back.

The linguist's tongue is silent.

And, at last, he weeps.

* * *

Persephone is the one who watches Daniel as he runs, as the miles across Tartarus slow his feet, as he burns and freezes, as he hears every syllable-less scream of agony of the damned, deprived of his final hope that Shau'ri follows, and she smiles.

On Earth, Demeter feels her pleasure and Jack sees her smile. He has no idea why her smile makes him feel as if he was watching a sunrise over his lake but the emotion makes him smile in return.

Even Teal'c's lips twitch upwards.

Just as things appear to be going their way, the Stargate begins to come to life. The Iris won't close.

Sam is cursing and running for the Control Room. Teal'c takes a ready stance with his staff weapon levelled. The Marines snap out of their Demeter-induced daze and take position. Even Demeter herself takes on a look of wariness.

"What now?" Jack grumbles, aiming his almost-forgotten gun at the wormhole as the blue wave explodes forward.

The Ter'fin'aki turns to him with deep green eyes wide. "I don't know, but I am afraid."

The wormhole locked in place, Walter announces: "Warning – Incoming traveller!"

The small purple Snake slithers forth, anti-climactically.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. When Everyone's Lost, the Battle is Won

If you haven't read the revised version of chapter 6 please go back and do so. There are more than a few changes, some of them quite major, to that chapter and this final part. Hopefully you like it and forgive me for taking so long over it. I just couldn't find a suitable final scene and only think now that I've approached something readable.

I disclaim – These characters aren't mine apart from the odd one. The title is from the Killers' song 'All These Things that I've Done' from their Hot Fuss album.

**When Everyone's Lost, The Battle is Won, With All These Things That I've Done**

Impossibly, they are at the steps before him. Not Shau'ri, though he no longer dare hope that she walks behind him, but his parents and Charlie.

"Danny," his mother reaches out for him and he must keep his eyes on the ground.

"Please," her beloved voice is breaking with tears. "Speak to me, Danny, please…"

"You ungrateful bastard," his father spits at him, "can't you see you're breaking your mother's heart?"

"Please, tell me my Dad isn't mad that I took his gun, please?" Charlie is 8 and will never be older. His voice is that of the child Daniel was when his parents were taken from him, his eyes as wide with the fear and horror of it. "He hates me, doesn't he? You've got to tell him, tell him I didn't mean any harm, tell him I'm sorry. You will tell him, won't you? Please? Swear you'll tell him! Come on, you know Dad's ultra-secret pinkie-swear!"

It goes on with every step, the pleading, the threats, the begging, and with every step Daniel feels himself die the death of the thousand cuts.

636 steps later, he can barely breathe. The light is growing nearer and begins to pierce the gloom of the Underworld. He hears nothing as the ghosts leave him at last.

The tears he weeps are endless.

In the darkness below, Hades smiles.

* * *

"Sir?" It was Carter's turn to shout. 

"General Hammond of Texas, we require your attention now!" Teal'c's staff weapon fired repeatedly and the Marines joined in the fire-fight against the tiny, lightning fast snake.

The Stargate shut again and once again was in movement, this time from an external signal.

In the midst of the chaos, the not-a-thing-but-a-God hissed his pleasure and danced through the bullets' paths.

He bit Demeter's ankle only to be shaken off and hit the far wall. He came back hissing and the event horizon formed once again.

"Oh fer cryin' out loud! What now?"

The Stargate is two miles away. Daniel runs. The dark earth is soft and springy beneath his feet. He can no longer see, his eyes blinded by tears and the light that burns his retinas to redness.

The Stargate has the power to carry him home. He reaches for the GDO he hid there so long ago and finds the DHD miraculously intact. The Gods have power, he knows, but the strangeness of this realisation of his dream passes him by.

It opens with a whir and a burst of light that blinds him to everything but his pain.

He leaps through, never looking back.

* * *

Daniel wakes from his sleep, his spirit returned to his body, and with a burst of glee Lachesis calls him, Demeter's fear empowering him. From the infirmary to the Gateroom takes milliseconds and he falls to his knees on the embarkation rank, his body still multicoloured, the pacemaker still biting into his heart, seemingly in worship of Snake-Thing's majesty. 

"Kill it."

He means to say "You've got to let me kill it" but the words won't form.

"Hossssst…" The Snake-God hisses at him.

"No, no way, not Danny." Somehow Jack is speaking and Daniel can hear him and the Stargate is open and it's all happening too fast.

He ran too hard, slept too little, wept too much, because now he cannot move to kill the snake even as his slithers towards him, ready to take command of the body that holds all the knowledge of the Underworld buried in its brilliant mind.

Lachesis sees such potential for greatness and great harm dwelling there. The ability to revive Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Jimi Hendrix, so soon the power would be his.

Then Demeter vanishes with a soft gasp.

* * *

"Yesterday," Shau'ri Jackson sang to herself in Abydonian, her feet dipped in the limpid pool, eyes gazing sightlessly down at the water. "All my troubles seemed so far away. Now they're back and they are here to stay, yes, I believe in yesterday." 

"My Dad used to sing me the Beatles before I fell asleep." Charlie O'Neill's head rests against her side. His young voice quavers as he strives for the notes, "I'd like to be under the sea, in an Octopus's garden in the shade."

Daniel's parents wander lost in their own minds, their grief doubled by the briefest glimpse of their son, the feel of his treachery still heavy on their skin. They find no solace in the rich culture that surrounds them. Leaning on each other, they walk into the night to mourn once more their forever lost child.

In Elysium, happiness should be eternal. Loved ones are reunited. The good are rewarded. The dead find peace. On feet of purest joy, Maia runs to her friend, free of her grief at last.

Shau'ri has never seen her so happy, so full of life. It is shocking, like sunshine in the middle of a hurricane.

"He freed me." Her smile is so bright that Shau'ri must turn her face away or feel the tears blind her. Daniel is gone forever. Her one hope for the afterlife has been taken from her and Charlie is her only consolation.

"Who?" Charlie is laying a necklace of lotuses in her lap, knowing her fondness for the blue flowers so like the Hapi that grow on her home world, both the colour of her lost husband's eyes.

"Lachesis! I thought when he took me for a host, his body wrapped around my neck, his teeth in my throat, that I was doomed. Instead I am free and safe!" Maia twirls across the verdant grass, feeling more alive than she has since the Goa'uld took her hostage. "But where is Daniel?"

Now the tears are free as Maia's soul, and Shau'ri sobs her grief. Charlie wraps his arms around her slim waist and feels the pain rack her soul. Above them, for the first time since Persephone was brought to the Underworld, a storm cloud rides the cerulean sky.

Waking from the sleep of the loved in the arms of her husband, Persephone sees it and frowns.

* * *

Just as all hope is lost and Daniel is close to resigning himself to his ignoble fate, spirit as broken as his heart, a hero emerges from the most unlikely place imaginable. 

Larger and tougher than anyone expected, he shoots across the room as if out of a cannon, screaming a blood curdling battle cry.

He swallows the little wannabe-god-snake whole, licking his lips in satisfaction as he chomps on the spicy tastes-just-like-chicken wings and oh-so-yummy-dark-meat.

Duty done, enemy conquered by consumption, the world and more importantly Daniel saved, he lets himself return to the shadows of his home. Though not before pointing at the man he'd rescued and enunciating clearly for all to hear in tones that could not be denied:

"Mine."

Then weary and suffering from slight indigestion, he slips back into the friendly darkness, returning to sleep until the world and Daniel needed him again.

Jack smirks, Sam gasps and Teal'c raises an eyebrow at Daniel who blushes astonished to be the subject of such protective power from such an unlikely source.

None of them had ever guessed that he was defended by such a being.

It was inconceivable, if you didn't know the meaning of the word.

There was the soft sound of a sigh being heaved as the sleeper settled back down to his rest in the most unusual place a hero has ever been found. Then the sigh travelled from the warm depths of darkness and emerges as a soft belch from the lips of the startled Jaffa.

Yes, the hero's home was in Teal'c's pouch.

It had been Junior to the rescue.

Just as he falls deeply asleep again, the smile of contentment of a job well done and a world well saved and more importantly, a Daniel well rescued, on his face despite the lingering sensation of heartburn, he hears the sarcastic Colonel say, "'Mine'? Daniel, is there something you want to tell us?" and the soft stuttering reply of his future-host, the beautiful, brilliant, blue-eyed, blond archaeologist that was the object of his fondest dreams.

"Well, I did give him some chocolate once."

The three words were echoed by the entire facility.

"Oh my God."

And Junior fell asleep, happy in this final homage to his greatness.

* * *

In the Underworld, watching with her newly beloved husband, Persephone is not best pleased. "Mother! It is Daniel's fate to rescue the entire world, not that of Teal'c's symbiotic delusional chocoholic snake!" 

The barriers to her coming dismantled for the first time in 8,000 years, Demeter descends into the Underworld. Around her, light comes, flowers spring from salted earth and a previously unsuspected nightingale begins to sing in what will afterwards come to be known as Berkley Square.

Her daughter is unimpressed by her entrance. "Fix this."

Demeter caresses her daughter's cheek, and is surprised to find her cold to the touch. "The symbiote is the brother of the Harcesis child, the son of Apophis and Ammonet, who else should defeat Fate himself?"

"Perhaps the one that Fate himself chose to defeat him?" Persephone replies, shifting towards her husband, subtly leaning into him.

Having the mother-in-law from hell, though he knew not literally, for the past 8,000 years, Hades wisely keeps quiet.

"I thought this was what you desired." Demeter holds her hands out in remonstrance. "You asked for a husband who loved you, for a healing place for the ex-hosts of the Goa'uld and for a friend to keep you company in the darkness of the Underworld. Shau'ri Jackson knows of love, of the pain of possession and the joy of companionship in the dark places. She is such a companion."

"She loves her husband, a man who taught me that my husband cares for me as no other does, and yet you make them miserable to make me happy!" In a fit of absolute fury, Persephone stomps her foot. Remembering she is Queen of the Underworld, she calms and turns to Hades. "We are Ter'fin'aki, we do not play with the lives of mortals for our own amusement. That we leave to the Ancients, the Ori and the Goa'uld. The Nox would not accept this. The Furlings would scorn it. I will not accept this."

Her eyes glow in the darkness with pure white irises and her husband shudders in fear and desire.

"Fix it."

* * *

Daniel wakes from his sleep, his spirit returned to his body, and with a burst of glee Lachesis calls him, Demeter's fear empowering him. From the infirmary to the Gateroom takes milliseconds and he falls to his knees on the embarkation rank, his body still multicoloured, the pacemaker still biting into his heart, seemingly in worship of Snake-Thing's majesty. 

"Kill it."

He means to say "You've got to let me kill it" but the words won't form.

"Hosssssssst…" Lachesis hisses at him.

"No, no way, not Danny." Somehow Jack is speaking and Daniel can hear him and the Stargate is open and it's all happening too fast.

He ran too hard, slept too little, wept too much, because now he cannot move to kill the snake even as his slithers towards him, ready to take command of the body that holds all the knowledge of the Underworld buried in its brilliant mind.

Lachesis sees such potential for greatness and great harm dwelling there. The ability to revive Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Jimi Hendrix, so soon the power would be his.

Demeter vanishes with a soft gasp. Jack curses with vivid fluency and a least four Marines glance at him in appreciation.

Then, just as all hope is lost and Daniel is close to resigning himself to his ignoble fate, spirit as broken as his heart, he remembers the end of the tablet. He has overcome Orpheus's flaw, stridden into the Underworld, won and lost his wife once more, walked through the very Gates of Hell, and he's damned if he loses himself to a jumped up snake with delusions of Godhood now.

It is not for nothing that he is a world-class scholar of ancient worlds, not for nothing that he has spent time with the Greek gods, and definitely not for nothing that he has been Colonel Jack O'Neill's Archaeologist, Soldier, Snake-Antagoniser, Rebel Leader and Smart Ass in Training for 5 years.

"Shi-Fu!" He screams the words. There is a cracking sound as Lachesis smacks his tail against Daniel's chest and breaks a rib. The archaeologist's breath is shortened instantly but he still exudes peace. "In the name of those who have gone before me, in the name of Oma Desala, in the name of the Tau'ri Earth, in the name of your mother Shau'ri, I plead for The Judgement of the Ancients."

Cheyenne Mountain quakes. The Stargate rumbles. Most impressively of all, Teal'c's calm is smashed.

"I am justice!" Lachesis wails against his chest.

"No." The word rings out and the entire Gateroom vanishes.

The Marines are surprised to find themselves weaponless in a courtroom with the rest of the SGC. Shi-Fu, Daniel's almost-son, sits in judgement above them, his throne a thundercloud.

The smallest of smiles crosses his face, reminding everyone present of Buddha. "You ask for Judgement?"

Before Jack can interrupt, Daniel answers calmly, "I do."

"You know the price. You will both be judged and if you are found wanting, your soul will be consumed." The boy is no older than when he left before, his orange robes**Daniel**: The music does not play the musician.  
**Shifu**: Normally there is truth in that.  
**Daniel**: Really? Good. Cause I really didn't have any idea what I was talking about.  
and beatific expression that of a Buddhist saint. Daniel thinks of Shau'ri and sees so much of her in this boy that his heart cracks yet again.

Jack's thoughts are far more to the point. "Uh-uh, Danny, no! Absolutely not!"

Teal'c's destroyed calm is evident in the raised eyebrow of distress, the catch in his voice, the angle of his staff-weapon that begs to fire on the Snake that wraps it's body around his friend's neck. "This is not a wise course of action, Daniel Jackson."

Daniel is as stone to his friend's pleas. Not even Sam's more gentle "Daniel, please?" can touch him.

A marine sums it up: "Gulp?"

With the memories of all the things he as Apophis has done, those that hurt Shau'ri the most painful though not the most horrific, Daniel is willing to pay it. He has no hope for his own soul. "Yes."

Lachesis writhes horribly in an attempt to escape – he did not expect this at all.

&&&

_The world is golden beneath them and the Ter'fin'aki rule over all. Lachesis breathes in the sweet air deeply and smiles at his two beloved sisters._

_&&&_

_Daniel watches horrified as his parents are crushed beneath the huge coverstone then wakes screaming to find his nightmare true and his family forever lost._

_&&&_

_The slave is brought before him for judgement. Lachesis knows the only answer for such a crime is death yet laying it upon the boy is heavy work._

"_The penalty for your crime is death. You will be taken from here to the place of execution and there you will be sent to Tartarus for your crimes. May Hades have mercy upon your soul."_

_  
The slave spat back, "And may he have none on yours."_

_&&&_

"_Tastes like chicken, you know, um, chicken?" Daniel makes chicken clucking sounds and beats his arms against his chest. The marines will dance the Funky Chicken at him for days now._

_&&&_

"_You are weighed, you are judged, you are found wanting, Lachesis. This is your fate."_

"_Bitch."_

_&&&_

"_Shyla."_

_The Princess helps him out of the sarcophagus and Daniel finds himself floating on a happy cloud of apathy to the problems that once drove him to constant work._

"_Beloved."_

_&&&_

_"Oh Great God Lachesis, Light of our Lives, Guider of our Fates, we beg you for mercy!"_

_"I have no mercy," he hisses in reply, hating the taste of his own spit between his fangs, his forked tongue still sore from its splitting. He had been so beautiful, and they did not worship him as a god any longer, despite the words of reverence. "It died with my body."_

_And the lightning strikes the fourteen rebels are barbequed._

_&&&_

_"If the instrument is broken, the music will be sour."_

_"The music does not play the musician."_

_"Normally there is truth in that."_

_"Really? Good. Cause I really didn't have any idea what I was talking about."_

_&&&_

Faster and fast the images blur before them, everything they have said and done, the good, the bad and the stupid. At last, two images resound loudly between them.

_&&&_

"_And what is the desire of the heart of Daniel Jackson?"_

"_To be with his wife."_

&&&

"_Dan'yel, please, do not leave me here again. Dan'yel, please!"_

&&&

"It is done."

The Harcesis child bows his head and the courtroom disappears.

Jack is screaming his defiance and then they are back in the Gateroom, with the Marines checking their briefly lost MP5s with the air of mothers reunited with lost children.

Daniel lies devastated at the end of the ramp, lost and unsure if he is alive or dead.

Lachesis lies dead next to him.

Jack realises that the right one is breathing and punches the air. "All right! Lazarus Jackson wins again!"

"General Hammond, the Gate is powering down now, sir." Walter's voice is a small oasis of calm and Daniel finds himself reviving at the sound.

Jack's arms pull him up and Teal'c is carefully grinding the head of the Not-A-Thing-But-A-God under his heel. Carter wipes away tears and throws her arms around her team mate.

"It is most pleasing to see you well again, Daniel Jackson."

"Good to see you too, Teal'c."

Jack is pretending that the moisture in his eyes is due to Gate dust or Event Horizon Allergies or in fact any damn thing that isn't seeing Daniel nearly get himself killed, again, because he's not sure he can deal with Dead-Again-Daniel this soon after he was thought lost. "All right kids, it's Friday so you know what that means."

"Pizza?" There were many things to be said for Haven, the lack of good pizza was not one of them.

"Hockey!" Jack exclaims in reply. "We defeated the bad guy, cured Danny, saw the Kid again, made snake-shish-kebab and it's not even six o'clock!"

Then, just as the last few seconds of the event horizon ticks away, Persephone, Charlie O'Neill and Shau'ri Jackson step through the Stargate.

"Oh my God."


	8. She Used Her Body Just Like a Bandage

Apologies to the nth degree. I meant to publish this months ago but wasn't sure it was finished. If it isn't now, it never will be. Small, explanatory chapter epilogue plus omakes yet to come. I hope you haven't all given up on me as I really have appreciated every review and hit this story has garnered.

I disclaim. Neither the characters of Stargate nor the lines "she used her body just like a bandage / she used my body just like a wound" belong to me.

**She Used Her Body Just like a Bandage**

"There is no time like the present" is a misquotation of the famous Ter'fin'aki proverb, "There is no time but the present".

Suddenly realising the truth of the statement, Daniel loses himself in the moment of knowing that she stands before him. Against all the odds and all common sense, he has played Orpheus to her Eurydice and rescued her from the Underworld.

When later asked, Persephone will point out that this is a much better fate for Daniel than being ripped to pieces by wild women made mad by his rejection of them and his body parts thrown in the river as Orpheus was. Jack will shudder in response and then consider picking the hot Goddess up before remembering that she is one of the race that made Daniel 1) multicoloured and 2) comatose.

There are moments that can change a person's life forever, that are crossroads of the soul where the Devil offers the sweet damnation of success, and where worlds are won and lost in the flick of a forked tongue.

This moment is not one of those but it marks a landmark in human history which will be debated by Daniel's academic successors for the millennia to come. The Ter'fin'aki will offer humans an escalator on the mountain path to becoming the Sixth Race and immortal words are to be spoken by Earth's representatives. The speech will be listened to in as much awe as those who heard Neil Armstrong step onto the moon.

Step forward Colonel Jack O'Neill.

"You god damned, delusional, snake ridden, arrogant, evil, self-righteous sons of bitches!" The Colonel's right hook has lost none of its impact and he curses aloud as instead of Persephone his fist hits the Stargate. "You come here with-"

Before he can get any further, there is a small tug on his uniform.

"Daaad!" It is Charlie's 'you're just so embarrassing' tone that convinces Jack that the apparitions are really their loved ones and their solidity is affirmed when his so-real 8 year old boy's arms fling around his neck in a bear-cub hug.

Shau'ri is staring at Daniel like a miser at Ali Baba's treasure trove.

"No, no, no," Daniel, so weak from his ordeal, scoots back. "I failed you, I chose not to save you, I left you!" The final three words seem to be torn from his very soul.

Shau'ri kneels next to him and her warm, slightly work roughened hands grip his. "Dan'yel, my Dan'yel."

As he breaks down in his wife's arms, Persephone snaps her fingers to make the picture more congruent and Daniel's skin tone loses its Technicolor shading, fading to pale brown.

Walter and more than one of the Marines quietly sniff back tears. They have seen Daniel suffer for years from the grief and guilt over the loss of his wife, seen the fire in his eyes extinguished when she died, seen him grieve all over again when he had to first give birth to a child hers and not his, then give up that child to protect it from the creature that had kidnapped and raped his wife and tortured him.

Jack hadn't believed that a woman more beautiful than Demeter existed until he saw Persephone in her full glory. His standards were then refined once more when he saw Shau'ri Jackson wrapping herself around Daniel like the world's prettiest teddy bear. All Persephone had was gorgeous bone structure, flawless skin and godhood. Shau'ri had Daniel's happiness in the palm of her hand. The only thing more beautiful than that was the small boy who had yet to let go of his father for an instant.

Colonel Jack O'Neill wasn't crying, nothing so girlish and soppy as that, he was full blown sobbing till he choked.

Teal'c raised an elegant eyebrow of, well not surprise, but perhaps the word would be curiosity. Then his handsome dignified face was split by the biggest grin the Marines had ever seen and internally, he did Chulak's Dance of Happiness and Triumph Over Enemies Whose Names Are Cursed and Whose Graves are Spat Upon.

It was, perhaps, a good thing that Teal'c did this only internally as the only thing standing between Hammond and a full on nervous breakdown was the big Jaffa's calm and grace under pressure.

The importance of this calm becomes especially clear when it is realised that Daniel would have recognised it as a variation of Bullet-Led-Tap-Dance Rhythm he himself had once performed.

The world was simply not ready for Teal'c to dance the Funky Chicken in public.

"Are they real?" One marine is quietly fingering his M16 as the mountain's favourite team acts most uncharacteristically.

Even scarier than Jack's tears are Teal'c's grins, scarier than that is the look on Carter's face as she questions Persephone, scariest of all is the love so palpable between Shau'ri and the Doc. Terrifying because it promises so much happiness and has instead brought so much pain.

Then she is kissing him and the love that was a bonfire becomes a nuclear explosion.

"Oh yeah," the second marine answers, "they're real."

"And this, this is the food of the gods, blue jello." Jack is showing Shau'ri and Charlie around the base while Daniel is forcibly restrained as he is checked by Janet's nurses. He begged for Shau'ri to remain but Janet had showed her the needles and Abydos's toughest lady had flinched and hidden behind Jack. Daniel had wondered if he should be insulted by that but then he would have done the same in her place.

"Jello?" Shau'ri's English is perfect, made more attractive rather than less by the Abydos accent, but she doesn't know what Jello is despite Daniel's attempts to explain.

"Yeah, jello, it's great," Charlie nods happily as he digs into the dish. Jack's eyes are on him and the love between them is as transparent as the boy's food.

"Do you have any," Shau'ri searches for the unfamiliar word, "Ice-cream? Dan'yel described it to me and once tried to make some with the milk of the female Mastadge but it," again words fail her and she pouts as she thinks, "tasted of feet."

"Feet?" Charlie is fascinated.

"No, I mean boots – 'army boots boiled in sand and then frozen for three days' is how Dan'yel described it."

The burst of laughter from Jack is enough to turn any gaze that has not already been pointed their way.

Hammond is standing in the doorway, thinking how much happier Jack looks now. He is shocked by the thought that he has barely noticed his premier team disintegrate. Reese was the final blow to their morale. The fragments of the friendship that had once been as strong as naquadah lay buried now between the new layers of hope and love.

The report on what Daniel had done to regain Charlie O'Neill and Shau'ri Jackson would have to wait. The General had no intention of disrupting the happiest day SG-1 had had in years.

Janet comes to tell him that Daniel is strangely fine, and not in his usual "No, really this is just a terrible haemorrhaging head wound that isn't really worse than a papercut, I'm fine" way but actually perfectly healthy. Persephone had fixed his skin, removed any weakness following the coma and even improved his eyesight. Now he was only as blind as a bat, not as blind as a naked mole-rat.

Hammond shook his head at that thought – too many hours of watching Animal Planet with his beloved granddaughters were clearly damaging his General Calm.

"It is really them, isn't it?" Janet is still standing at his elbow. Her eyes are fixed on the scene before them as Daniel rejoins his beloved wife and Shau'ri's eyes widen as she eats ice-cream for the first time. In seconds the bowl is empty and she holds it out for more. A marine rushes to fetch it for her. It has taken 22 minutes and 46 seconds, but Shau'ri Jackson has captured the heart of the entire base.

"Yes, General. It's definitely them. I don't know how it could have happened but it did and I think we just need to be grateful. SG-1 were beginning to crack." Janet sighed as she watched them. "I've yet to write my medical report, sir."

She left a meaningful pause then went on. "Sir, what are we going to do when Area-51 find out about this? They're going to want to pump Shau'ri for information and I don't even want to imagine what they'll do to her and Charlie when they realise that they're back from the dead."

Hammond never took his eyes off the quartet but a smile played around his lips as they were joined by Sam and Teal'c. "What we always do, Major."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow elegantly. "Lie our asses off?"

The General's smile is as bright as the Texas sun at noon on a hot June day. "Precisely."

Unbeknownst to anyone at the SGC, several thousand light years away, a planet called Kelowna blew itself up with a naquadah enhanced bomb.

A still disembodied Lachesis – he wasn't due for incarnation into his new female avatar for another 3 millennia – grinned as his plans came to fruition. Daniel had only assumed he was saving the world from Snake-Thing and Minthe. Actually he was saving it several times over and the loss of Kelowna would, incidentally, cause several other planets to flourish as SG-1 arrived intact and sans-Jonas. Lachesis had big plans for his pet archaeologist. Those Ori were really getting on his currently incorporeal 32DD tits.

Jack digs deep into his Jello and realises that life has never been so good. "So the Kid did good work today. You two should be very proud."

"The Kid?" Shau'ri's brow crinkles as she stares at Jack in wonderment.

Jack waves a Jello-free spoon in the air carelessly. "You know, the Kid, your son, the Harcesis child Shi-fu."

"You called him WHAT?" Jack winces at the sudden rise in volume.

Daniel stares down at his bowl as Charlie hides a smirk. He knows all about when parents fight and he finds it particularly funny when it's Shau'ri using her Angry Voice which she usually reserves for Hades himself. "Shi-fu. It means light."

"I know what it means." The Marines are sneaking looks at each other as a tornado hits paradise in the shape of Shau'ri's soon to be infamous temper. "I want to know why you did not do as I instructed and name him in the Abydonian-Earth tradition?"

"I didn't get to keep him. The Ancient Oma Desala is helping him cope with his power. She called him that." Daniel's head is down but his eyes are bright. Jack wonders if Shau'ri's sudden reappearance will cause problems for the couple. They had had a tumultuous time since they'd been together last – and that wasn't counting the whole pregnant with the Harcesis child of your greatest enemy thing. This couldn't be smooth sailing, could it? No, nothing was ever easy for Daniel Jackson.

"Oh my Dan'yel," Shau'ri's eyes are full of tears as she wraps her arms around him. She knows how he feels about leaving people behind, refusing to abandon anyone as he had been abandoned so many times before. Giving Oma Desala the Harcesis child cannot have been an easy decision. "My Dan'yel."

For the second time that day, Jack and the Marines felt tears welling up. They weren't going to cry in the Mess Hall though so everyone made sniffing noises, coughed and muttered something about allergies to the food.

Persephone watched from near General Hammond, invisible, and smiled. Her time on Earth was almost done – she had left her mother and husband to sort out their differences in the Underworld and if she didn't get back soon she suspected Zeus would end up descending to stop the fight and when Zeus appeared, Hera could not be far behind. Thinking of the matriarch of the Ter'fin'aki, Persephone shuddered and snapped her fingers.

For a brief moment Shau'ri and Daniel's skin pulsed gold and then it was gone, but in that moment he forgot all the torments of Tartarus and knew only he had suffered but it was over now. Shau'ri forgot less and more, and never clearly remembered her years as the host of Ammonet or her days in the Underworld, but would be able to tell him all about the days she had spent with the others at the Haven.

Just before Persephone vanished back into her own world, she heard Jack ask, "So what did you want to call him?"

And Shau'ri responded in the finest tradition of Abydos, "Jack-Daniel's."

His laughter would resound through the Kingdom of the Dead and eventually reach Melbourne and Claire Jackson who would smile, hold each other's hands and laugh their heads off too.

Later that night, Jack and Charlie watch the hockey together, waiting for Sarah to come. How he's going to explain that their eight-year-old son who died seven years before is alive and well but still only eight he doesn't know and nor does he care. Nor will she.

Happiness, at last, is his.

He wonders how far Shau'ri and her Dan'yel got before they gave into the passion that was so clearly burning between them. Shau'ri was damaged, but then so was Daniel. He wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get out of the base before they caved.

Teal'c was above betting on such things but he won any moral bet when he had said simply "Daniel Jackson and Shau'ri Jackson will reach the carpark and no further" before disappearing to Kel'no'reem.

Shau'ri is alive.

He has lost and gained and saved the world again.

The sun is brilliant as it shines on her face.

The breeze is sweet as it stirs her hair.

The music is wild as she dances with whirling feet.

The fire burnishes their bodies bronze as it warms her bones.

The ice-cream pools as he feeds her body.

The only life is that shared with her.

There is nothing without her.

He breathes deeply and lets the darkness of her eyes take him.

She uses her body just like a bandage.

She uses his body just like a wound.

The scars will linger but not forever. In the hot night Daniel finds solace in her arms.

He breathes deeply and lets the darkness of her eyes take him.

"My Dan'yel," she whispers softly.

At last, he finds peace.

Watching, Lachesis hisses "It's about damn time" and for once, Jack would agree.


	9. Hope

Welcome to the epilogue / explanation for a lot of what went before. I hope it makes sense as the chronology is deliberately somewhat jumpy. Originally, Daniel's adventures were meant to last a lot longer but then RL took over and I realised I would never finish a novel length version of this story. Once again, thanks to all those who have read and reviewed this. I hope this isn't a let down.

I've decided to post the omakes as a separate chapter. They just don't fit well at the end of this.

I disclaim. The title is from Emily Dickenson's "Hope".

**Hope is the Thing with Feathers That Perches in the Soul****... I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.**

She had always known their story would end in the hot sands of the desert of her home world, where it had begun. She hadn't been surprised that a Jaffa had killed her. She was not the first of her family to be killed by them. Her beloved mother had died so many years ago at the hands of the false gods who found her beauty insulting to their authority. Shau'ri could only hope she would be the last, that Skaa'ra and her father would live without the fear of the Evil Ones. This reprieve was beyond her knowing.

"I love you, Dan'yel." How she had begged him to teach her the English words for love, so she could whisper it in his ear even as he caressed her soul in his accented Abydonian. The language had lain heavy on her tongue, words of rain and sodden soil, of something called snow and popcorn, of coffee and an animal called a cat, of poetry that made little sense yet soothed her to sleep against his sun-stroked chest. She had listened as he spoke all the words of love he knew, in more languages than Abydos had accents.

She hadn't expected it to end so soon. First the Stargate reopened to return Colonel O'Neil to them – to Skaa'ra's delight. Her joy had been overwhelmed by fear of losing her husband to the fair haired woman so exotically bright and beautiful against her own dull darkness. So soon after that, that fear was shown to be the least of her worries as the Stargate opened again to take her and her brother from their home. She had been made host to a Goa'uld, a fate beyond anything she could have imagined in her darkest nightmares. Now her soul was walking the paths of the dead and she was leaving her beloved Dan'yel to loneliness once again. "Forgive him."

"Shau'ri, I love you. Je t'aime, amo te, ik houd van u, I love you, I love you, I love you…" She loved the Beatles. That always surprised her, that Earth had music so strange and beautiful, as extraordinary and wonderful as her Daniel.

"Goodnight sweet Prince," Shakespeare too. The words in English moved her as only Abydonian love poems could.

"May flights of angels sing you to your rest." He finished for her and then the familiar darkness came, as cool and horrifying as the tones of the Goa'uld that had once possessed her.

"Dan'yel," she cried out in fright and his arms held her but she did not feel them, and his tongue spoke to her but she did not hear him, and his soul wept for her and she knew only pain.

He was alone then, not in darkness but in absolute blinding light of the desert sun. He had lost her, as he knew he would, so instead he told her his story, though she had never asked, would never ask, and the telling did nothing to relieve the pain in his soul.

The Haven was no more than a shell to him now. She had died without knowing where she was or that she was free of her parasite. All the memories of happiness they had shared here were ripped away by the snake's bite. Time was short for Daniel too. Lachesis, villain and saviour that he was, had promised him only a few short minutes with his dying wife. He hadn't expected them to be here, where he had never been before. He had slipped out of time, out of knowing, with the bite on his ankle and now with the body of his dead love in his arms, he did not know how he would manage to see her again with the foreknowledge of her death without weeping endlessly. He knew his other self would be coming soon, that he would find her and believe she had died alone from the snake bite which had also killed Orpheus's Eurydice.

He had walked across the universe with Lachesis since that first bite on his ankle, had seen suns explode and black holes be born, had watched gods rise up and be deposed, had met the Fate sisters and seen his thread spun out. All along the way, he had aided Lachesis in his schemes to right the universe to its true path and now his travels were almost at an end. A thousand years had passed in a heartbeat as Lachesis had drawn him onwards through time. Now every heartbeat seemed a thousand years of pain. He had forgotten almost all of it, the knowledge of so much time too much for even his brilliant mind to hold, but the beginning and the end were as clear as they'd ever been.

This had been his only request to Lachesis, that she wouldn't die alone, and the truth was the price he had to pay for it. The Ter'fin'aki were godlike but even gods must be paid.

"I walked away from Abydos with Jack. We settled into a routine of grief. We both pretended our worlds weren't broken, that our hearts were whole, that the most important people in our lives were still alive, and we worked for other people whose worlds weren't broken. Then we went to P5X-606 and it all changed."

He settled his back against the tree and laid her cooling head in her his lap, turning her neck so very gently so she would be comfortable. She moved too easily, her muscles relaxed in death.

"It was such a beautiful world, so much like Abydos, but deserted apart from this little snake-god creature. He wanted to rule the universe. Don't they all? But he needed knowledge of the Underworld, I still don't know why, knowledge he couldn't get himself. So he bit me but so lightly I barely noticed and then I went through the Stargate. That was when things got really weird…"

_Two weeks after P5X-606..._

"Jack?" Daniel turned around and around on the spot looking for the Colonel. "Sam? Teal'c? Anyone?"

He wasn't on Earth. He was Gatewrecked on an unfamiliar world and Jack, well, "Jack's gonna kill me."

He'd been lost, Gate-wrecked, for two weeks. He was out of food. He was out of water. His carefully thought out plan to wait by the Gate for the first day then to search the locality for signs of civilisation had backfired after he'd been gored by that bright purple boar-like creature. The thing had had tusks as big as Jack's hunting knife and as viciously sharp as Janet's needles.

Yet the Stargate had whirled to life and was even now pulsing softly in the orange dawn light. Oh yeah, there was a kicker – the sky here was pale green and the sun shone more orange than yellow. He was slightly surprised that he could still breathe perfectly well.

Then an entire troop of Jaffa stepped through the Gate and Daniel realised there was no cover on this world that would hide him, the short shrubs and long grass only coming to his waist. Nevertheless, he dived to the ground and hoped he hadn't been seen.

The big guy at their head, almost as well-muscled of Teal'c if a bit more reminiscent of Mr. T, stopped and thumped the end of his staff weapon on the ground before pointing it precisely in Daniel's direction. "Kree!"

"Right. Of course. Just my luck, Stargate starts up and the first thing I hear is Goa'uld for 'Yoo-hoo!'" In a rare moment of self-pity, his leg causing him enough pain for him to consider stabbing the other one just to distract himself, Daniel muttered, "Wonder which god I offended this week?"

"Me."

A harsh bite on the ankle later and the Jaffa vanished from view as Daniel was whirled through space, time and some extremely nasty smoke.

When he finished coughing all over the beautiful marble floor, Daniel sat back on his heels then moved quickly as his leg throbbed like, in Jack's parlance, a 'son of a Nirrti'. "That was a rhetorical question though God knows I should stop tempting Fate."

"Quite right. I'm tempted enough." Daniel looked up from his prone position and then looked up a bit more. Before him stood the tallest man he'd ever seen, and considering he hung out with Teal'c that was saying something.

"Oh, not again!" He groaned and closed his eyes, something he only usually did when Jack thrashed out the essentials of hockey for the fifth time in an evening of beer, pretzels and sport played by men in more body armour than Daniel wore for combat situations.

The Michael Jordan look-alike grinned down at him. "Again?"

"I've got future-backwards déjà vu. This has happened before hasn't it?" Where was Carter when you really needed her to explain the mysteries of the space-time continuum?

The grin just got bigger. "Will happen again, yes, you're looped in time only I've inserted the memories of your consciousness from 10 minutes from now into your mind now."

"Bqllrs."

"Language, language! I may be Ter'fin'aki but I hang out with Thor and I know what that means."

Utterly distracted by this incongruity of appearance and reality, Daniel asked, "Thor swears?"

"Like a marine." The grin suddenly makes Daniel think of the Cheshire Cat, its smile independent of the reality of the rest of it. "You wouldn't think it to look at him but thunder-boy's got a mouth like a sewer and a mind to match."

The sense of unreality has become so strong that Daniel finds himself just giving up and accepting it. He's had enough death, near-death, torturous and hallucinatory experiences before to know when to cut his mental losses and deal with the insanity.

"Right. So why am I here?"

"Because my future self bit you in the ankle. Name's Lachesis, otherwise known as the hot brother of the Fate sisters."

If Daniel is insane – they thought he was once before – then at least this is an interesting hallucination and not that horrifying delusion he suffered from when he saw the dead walking.

"But you look like Michael Jordan!" Somehow Jack's sports knowledge has permeated Daniel's brain to the point where he can recognise the most famous stars in the world, if not name their teams.

"I thought you'd find this form comforting."

"Because the Fates aren't terrifying enough as it is?" Daniel is standing up slowly, his leg still quivering with pain beneath him.

"Yes, although I am about to be deposed for crimes that are really only misdemeanours that any young Ter'fin'aki might commit. Thor's a tough critic"

Daniel's forehead crinkled. "Ter'fin'aki?"

Lachesis's grin is huge and terrifying, like that of a sabre-toothed tiger, but Daniel has befriended Unas before. "I thought you would recognise the Goa'uld word for us."

Daniel mentally translates this. "'They who must be avoided at all costs'?"

"That's us. Ra called us that and it stuck."

With the desperation of a swimmer in a shark infested ocean, Daniel grabs onto this mental life-raft. He knows about Ra. "Ra's dead. I was there when he died."

Lachesis is still grinning and Daniel wondered if he should find something to defend himself with, though what he'd use short of a bazooka to do it. "I know. That's why you're here. I need you."

"Why?"

"You have to set up events to go to the Underworld to reclaim your wife, save Earth from the Goa'uld Minthe and eventually kill me to save me."

Momentarily Dr. Jackson channelled Colonel Jack. "Oh fer cryin' out loud."

-----------------------

The heat of the desert keeps Shau'ri's body warm against his chest, but still she is cooling.

"Turns out Lachesis was in charge of balance when he was still one of the three Ter'fin'aki Fates. He had to be bad as well as good in equal parts. He was a tyrant and a brilliant ruler, a monster and a star." Daniel enlaces his fingers into her dark curls. "He needed to die in order to be able to live but only the Harcesis child would be able to kill him so he needed to be brought to his attention. When he saw me come to his world in his future, the stepfather of the Harcesis, he realised what an opportunity he had been granted. Then he manipulated time and space so that when he died, it would be in balance with his life. I didn't live because I was a truly good person, I lived because the bad I'd done in my life was a hair less than the good."

He still doesn't quite believe that but with Shau'ri in his lap he cannot speak too self-deprecatingly without missing the gentle slap of her hand on his chest in admonishment. Everything hurts too much and another loss of touch will destroy him.

"It took me two weeks to find the copy of the tablet with the story of us and then another three days to finish translating what Lachesis wanted at the end of it, how to defeat himself. The original cup he stole from one of his worshippers and called it tribute. My name burned onto it seemed to glow in the night."

Her body is so still, there is nothing to speak of the spirit that once brightened his life. He knows he doesn't have long – Lachesis will come for him soon to take the cup and tablet to the proper place before returning him to the Haven, months ago and without his memory. He wouldn't know then that he would gain and lose Shau'ri, but then that was what Lachesis intended.

Daniel knew he was damning himself to incredible pain. Lachesis offered no quarter. This was the price of saving the world. Lachesis knew he would turn evil one day, that he already had as Daniel was before him, had seen it spun out in the threads his sisters' wove, knew that his so-called misdemeanours would lead to a fate more terrible than Daniel's, but he too would forget and when they met again eternity would hang in the balance. He had no choice – Thor would mind wipe him four thousand years ago in Earth time and sometime in the distant future in his own personal time that free-fell through space – for his power was too great. With a wave of his hand, he could rip apart the fabric of the universe and with a kiss plunge someone through space and time. Without those hands, as Jack's Not-A-Snake-But-A-God, his powers would be limited to his teeth and venomous tongue.

Daniel was going to miss the godlike alien. Not that Lachesis was a god, for he simply proved Asimov right and the power of the Ter'fin'aki appeared even to the other great false gods of the universe, the Goa'uld, to be magic rather than science.

"'They who must be avoided at all cost' are so advanced they make the Ancients look like the children they see us as, but they're still so very flawed. They stand apart from the alliance that joins the Asgard, the Furlings, the Nox and the Ancients. It's a balance of power so delicate that it scares even the Furlings." Daniel strokes the hair away from her face and feels the skin cooling under his palm. "He took me through space and time and I saw wonders that will be part of my soul forever, even though in an hour I'll forget I ever saw them. He offered to let me remember, to know everything he taught me, to be able to hold the power of the Ter'fin'aki, but you know how that ended for me last time."

---------------------

"Behold!" The priest boomed above their heads, "Your GOD!"

A youth, handsome and dark haired, stepped forward to the front of the enormous crowd and held up a hand. The crowd screamed wildly, tearing at their hair and clothes. "Enough!"

The silence falls instantly.

"Shhh," Lachesis-Michael-Jordan hides them both from the Not-A-Snake-But-A-God version of himself as the snake wriggles forwards on his belly. Like the Great and Powerful Oz that Daniel once pretended to be, he maintains his power through misdirection and illusion. None of the fifteen thousand worshippers kneeling before him realise that the creature in control of their God's body is sitting eight feet to the right.

His crimes were committed long since, his body an emblem of what he was and did. A treacherous snake, cowardly, small and resembling in some ways the Goa'uld the Ter'fin'aki despise so much. His power over these people, this planet, is insignificant to what he once held but for five thousand years he has held sway. That is, until today.

Daniel whispers, "What are we doing here?"

"Waiting. We need to hide your tablet so that you can find it."

"Why do I have a bizarre sense of deja-vu?"

"Ah, the Moebius strip lives you never lived. They have some strange side-effects when I take you into pasts of yourself that you've never lived through."

"This happened?"

"Will happen, has happened and is happening yes." Having the space-time continuum explained, as understood by a being roughly two million years ahead on the evolutionary time scale who is currently looking like one of the most successful currently evolved beings from his home planet, is giving Daniel a headache. At last Lachesis-Michael Jordan says something he can grasp. "There is no time but the present."

"Right."

Then he says something Daniel can understand perfectly, he just wishes he couldn't. "Go put this tablet and cup under the altar and then start your third rebellion against a false-god unjustly ruling a planet of slaves."

"And just how do I do that?"

Michael Jordan shrugs. "How did you do it the first time?"

"Got myself killed."

"Don't do that. I have great power but abusing it is what gets me turned into him." He jabs a finger at the Snake-Thing and Daniel winces. He can't imagine what that must be like. At the moment, neither can Lachesis but within the next millennia from his personal time that changes.

SG-1 usually has a plan, often half-assed but a plan nevertheless. Daniel comes up with nothing and realises how utterly FUBAR this situation is. He snorts as he realises that Jack had finally taught him military parlance when he isn't around to hear him use it.

A day from his childhood suddenly returns to him, the smell of the floor polish and Jimmy Resnick's trainers pungent in his nostrils, and he recalls his crush on Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz and how he loved the story of her going to the Emerald City and learning the truth about their leader. "Right, double talk it is."

He's a linguist, words are to him what water is to fish. This should be easy.

Then he spots the guards. They are as tall as the man beside him and as built as Teal'c. It's then that Daniel realises this mission is going to end FUGAZI style. He only hoped the one zipped into the bag would be Lachesis and not him.

"Weak and pitiful mortals!" Whatever he said before, Lachesis-mach-MJ is helping him. "Cower before me for I am the great and powerful Oz!"

The guards exchange glances and the resemblance to Teal'c ends as their faces are less than impassive. Truth be told, Daniel isn't looking his most powerful self. His eyebrows are still missing from an accident during the forging of the wedding cup and the ends of his hair are singed.

"Who are you? You are not Ter'fin'aki," Snake-Thing is controlling the handsome man's mouth and the snake can barely be heard hissing above the boom of the oration. "I do not recognise you."

"I am the Great and Powerful Oz," Daniel seeks words and finally says, "The Dark Lord of Memphis, known to my Death Eater followers as He Who Must Not Be Named. I challenge you for dominion over this planet, snake."

"Your true name infidel!" The head guard launches himself forward, spear well aimed and Daniel turns to stare at him.

The head guard spontaneously combusts and leaves only a burning pair of sandals behind him. Lachesis thoughtfully adds lightning bolts darting out of Daniel's eyes.

"I do not condone such impertinences." Daniel is haughty enough to be on another sarcophagus high. He finds behaving like a powerful god rather too easy and has to hide a wince at his own arrogance.

"Kill him." Snake-Thing's human avatar is haughtier still and in the war of appearance, Daniel's lack of eyebrows damage his status as a higher being.

Daniel doesn't hesitate and yells, "Lachesis I name thee false god and weakling!"

"Die, blasphemer!"

Fifteen thousand people launch themselves forwards as Daniel dives behind the altar. He quickly shoves the cup and tablet deep under it to where Lachesis the snake usually resides during the ceremonies in his name, where they will stay for more than five thousand years.

Primary mission completed, he glares at his guide. "Help me!"

Lachesis was power, he burned with it. Both as snake and basketball star, he was God-like. The difference was as a human-shaped avatar he was willing to use it for good rather than selfish gains.

He clicks his fingers and Daniel bursts into flame.

"This is the voice of the True God Oz." He doesn't sound Goa'uld, as he fears for a brief instant he might, but like the Wizard of the film.

The words belong to Lachesis, not him.

"Bow before me, puny mortals, or suffer the fate of your false God!"

The boy who is possessed by Lachesis also bursts into flame but his is more a fiery agony than a glowing godhood.

It's the language the worshippers understand though and the revolt against Daniel is swiftly turned. He levitates out of the way and rises to the ceiling. His arms are stretched out sideways and he is still burning with a golden fire.

The Lachesis of this time and place screams in fury. Michael Jordan cackles in response.

-----------------------

The world changes entirely in the month Daniel rules as Oz. He sends all who dwell on the planet through the Stargate to an uninhabited planet that the Goa'uld never tried to colonise. He sends Thor a message and leaves the little alien thoroughly confused by the tale of time dislocation and future friendship. The chocolate Lachesis finds, from where he only knew, eases the way. The whole civilisation is abandoned before any Ter'fin'aki can realise what's happened and attempt to stop it.

Lachesis keeps grinning at Daniel in a disturbing way. At last, 33 days after it began, the rebellion is complete and Daniel is alone on the planet. The trap for his future self is set. The tablet that will fascinate him, the Wedding Cup engraved and Lachesis's urn all carefully hidden under the altar together. The Haven is built in to the fabric of this planet, its desertion leaving room for those who need solitude in the next life. The Egyptians believe that tomb goods would be sent to the Afterlife to help the owners. For the host of the Goa'uld, an entire planet of resources is hardly recompense enough.

It is Lachesis's kindness, but as always it is in balance: Daniel is forced to watch as those who will use the Haven one day are made into hosts, including the boy Ra possessed and he helped kill.

Despite everything he has seen and done, the vision still brings him to his knees.

Daniel doesn't know all of his coming fate. If he did, he might not have the strength to go on.

He takes a deep breath and watches the event horizon vanish at last, the Stargate closing and the last of the people gone with it.

"I'm ready. Take me to her."

-------------------------

How is he to know that Lachesis's plans are far more complex than that? That a thousand years and more will pass before he sees Shau'ri again? He forgets so much, but the archaeologist in him will have deja vu time and again when on other planets he sees the things they have done, the lives they touched. It is balance, he who learns from history creates it too. Or that's what Lachesis tells him.

The price of it all is that Shau'ri will not die alone. He knows he will go to the Haven, that he will have a few more days of peace with her and then she will leave him again. He doesn't realise that those days are yet to come, that it is now she is dying.

When she is in his arms, he cares for nothing else and nothing else is remembered.

"…And that's how I came to you here. Soon, Lachesis will send me back through time and fate will spin our way down into the Underworld. I will see you again, Shau'ri, beloved." Daniel kisses her forehead and the world shakes beneath him.

His smile is not so much wry as devastated and he has yet to reach Tartarus and the dreams Hades will inflict, opening wounds already red raw with pain.

"Lachesis says that he's one of the Greek Fates but I think they just play at being Gods. They don't care about us. Fate as a bitch is a cliché for a reason."

Then suddenly it is all too much and Daniel breaks and weeps over her.

"Shau'ri, Shau'ri," the smell of her surrounds her like an embrace, but it is with cold arms as her essence fades on the wind. "With his power, I could have saved you and I chose not to."

Lachesis touches his arm. "It's time."

Daniel nods once, never taking his eyes off his wife's still face. "I have to go. Know that I'll love you forever."

"Daniel, it's time to go." Lachesis's tone is urgent now and at last Daniel lays her body down. He stands and before he can see himself, Lachesis whisks him away.

A wave of the hand and Daniel finds himself back where Lachesis first found him. He was dressed in the same clothes with his pack intact. Unfortunately he was also back at the precise same moment as he'd left.

"Kree!" The Jaffa repeated and Daniel turned to glare at Lachesis.

Lachesis shrugs. "Oops?"

Another wave of the hand, the Stargate bursts into life and Daniel is transported to its very edge. The Jaffa, confused by his miraculous teleportation trick, whirl around and fire. The staff-weapon charge dissipates into a cloud of orange light that sparkles in the air around the strange pair.

"Until you kill me," Lachesis grins and kisses Daniel on the cheek. The memory of everything that has happened vanishes from his mind and he falls through the Stargate, the personal time copies of the tablet and cup are back in place and everything else gone.

The time loop was complete...

The Stargate glimmers in the moonlight brightly. Moonlight – that can't be right, Daniel thinks, there's no natural light in the Gate Room, not 28 floors below ground level and with a mountain in the way.

The stupidity of the thought hits him as he realises that this isn't just Not the Gate Room, but also Not Colorado, probably Not the Earth and possibly Not the Galaxy. He hadn't been Colonel Jack O'Neill's pet archaeologist for six years for nothing, though, and he quickly sought out and completely failed to find a DHD.

"Oh bqllr," Daniel swears as he realises that something has, yet again, gone horribly wrong and he is stranded, yet again, on an alien world with no way home.

He would swear far more if he knew what he was about to go through and why. There's a reason why it isn't just her brother that calls Fate a bitch.

**_And so it began._**


	10. Burned Out Plans to Take Over World

OK, so that was how it all worked out. I hope I didn't confuse too many people. There's just one more thing left to be explained: how Shau'ri and Charlie got out of the Underworld. Well, let's just say that Teal'c's symbiote wasn't the only unlikely method they chose...

I disclaim. The title is from Bowling for Soup's "Why Don't I Miss You?" and the rest is all Barry.

**Burned Out Plans to Take Over the World**

Time passes differently in the Underworld. Things were not quite as quick as it appeared on Earth.

Shau'ri was without Daniel for 11 days while he suffered without her. She had no idea of what happened to him or indeed that 11 days had passed for the simple reason that Persephone wouldn't allow her to remember.

For one thing, having watched all that passed, her respect and admiration for the Ter'fin'aki would have been severely diminished and that just wouldn't do.

For another, she kept making Hades laugh by humming old Earth songs and Demeter was becoming progressively more annoyed. The joke was at her expense as it was entirely her fault that Hades knew the songs at all. She was the one who ventured into the daylight and brought back CDs.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, she had a temper on her that made Hera look calm and after the fifth time she had stolen Sisyphus's rock in order to squash them all flat for the first of Demeter's attempts to "fix it".

More attempts later than they were prepared to admit to Shau'ri, they agreed to her terms to fix Daniel's fate and in payment for all he'd suffered, grant her and Charlie the chance to return to life on Earth.

They had attempted to impose conditions but Shau'ri had glared at them and they remembered that despite being Ter'fin'aki, this was the woman that Lachesis's almost-host had been prepared to sacrifice his entire post-mortem happiness for and that they would best not mess with her.

For the first time ever, a dead woman got herself out of the Underworld.

_**This was why…**_

Lachesis worms his way up his leg and Daniel, skin pulsing red, struggles to find the strength to flatten him. This is not how things are supposed to end. He finds himself glancing at Teal'c and then remembers his Homer.

Simpson that is.

He allows Lachesis to reach his throat and then head for his mouth. At the last possible moment he bites down hard, severing the snake's head from his body.

"Mmmm, chocolaty."

"Oh my God."

"Ewww!"

---------------------------

The tablet was in Daniel's hand, its weight comfortably familiar.

Lachesis approached, spitting orange venom and hissing words without an s in. "Mine! Forever!"

_WHAPPA-THUNKEI!_

The stone makes the same sickening sound of breaking bone and flesh as the coverstone did when it killed his parents.

"Not in this reality."

----------------------

"Daniel Jackson!" Teal'c yells the heads' up and Daniel only just manages to catch the small box before it flies open and releases the prisoner within.

"Noooo!" Lachesis screams, orange spittle melting the ramp. _"Not a mongooooosssssse!"_

A brief crunch later and his plans for world domination were averted.

Daniel would later swear he heard the word "Ssssshit!" echo from within the mammal's stomach but no one else was close enough to confirm it.

----------------------------

"What'sss this, precioussss, nasty fat hobbitses trying to steal you from me?"

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"

Out of nowhere, a cow landed on Lachesis.

"Um, Daniel?"

Daniel grins. "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition or Monty Python flying cows."

-----------------------

Daniel raises an eyebrow, the largest movement he can currently make. "What? No dinner, no dancing? Not even a box of chocolates?"

Teal'c's stomach gurgles slightly.

"Hossst," Lachesis repeats. His spit corrodes the embarkation ramp base. "Together we will conquer worldssss. The very Universsse sssshall be ourssss!"

"Am I that cheap a date? I mean I know Jack got me drunk on two beers but seriously, don't I at least deserve a bit of Barry White?"

Lachesis stops dead in his tracks. "Ssssss hiiiisssss sss Barry White sssss?"

"You know, the Man with the Velvet Voice, the Maestro, the Walrus of Love," Daniel is too weak to wave his hands but second by second he regains his strength. "Saved all the snakes from being whacked to death in the Simpsons once."

Impossibly, Walter has found a copy of Just the Way You Are and played it onto the intercom. Someone, later, will pay and pay and pay for having such a thing on base.

"_Don't go changing, trying to please me_

_You never let me down before…"_

The music washes around them and Lachesis begins to sway silently to it.

"Ssss-Barry White?" The Not-A-Thing-But-A-God repeats. "He shall be our ssssecond in command, in charge of our Antarctic regionsssss where once the Argumentative Ancientsss dwelt."

The volume increases until everyone but Daniel and Lachesis are dropping their weapons to cover their ears.

"_I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble_

_We never could have come this far…"_

Lachesis is entranced. He is charmed by the singer and as he sinuously dances his way towards his new host, his whole body wiggles in time to the beat.

The music surges louder and the entire embarkation ramp begins to throb with it.

"_I took the good times, I'll take the bad times_

_I'll take you just the way you are…"_

"Hossst, thissss issss truly the musssic of the Godsssss." Lachesis is in ecstasy, his spit flowing freely.

Daniel shrugs, apparently immune to the ear splitting volume and Walter's knowledge of Spinal Tap's audio system. The amp must surely have reached eleven by now. Blood is coming out of the nearest marine's ears and the owner of the Walrus's album will have to walk very softly and carry a very big stick to avoid retribution when this is over.

Lachesis is so very close now, Daniel's tumbled body at the bottom of the embarkation ramp so very vulnerable.

The Snake-God's tiny wings burr and then dampen, the bass line is too much and he must move with it. Shaken to the floor, he is almost purring in satisfaction. His long-planned triumph has arrived at last.

"_I could not love you any better,_

_I love you just the way you are!"_

The final notes arrive and with them the loudest pitch of all. The embarkation ramp, slowly shaken loose of its moorings by the pounding beat, rises up and Daniel kicks Lachesis under it.

The song ends and four tonnes of steel drop with a resounding crash, smashing the delusional Daniel-deifying serpent to a peanut-butter-chunky pulp.

Jack is incapable of lifting his jaw from his chest to exchange a befuddled look with Carter or he would be yelling "What the hell just happened?"

The galaxy-saving-archaeologist grins. Computer geek is apparently infectious. "All your bass are belong to us."

The End.

Hope you enjoyed it and happy holidays, whatever your religious inclination.


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